


Together in the Dark

by ankaren



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Horror, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-29
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-15 06:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ankaren/pseuds/ankaren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captured by the government, Danny finds himself locked up with a strange man, another half-ghost who is unable to recall his own life.  The two learn to depend on each other to endure the cruel tests of their captors.  Even after their escape, a difficult road awaits them.  Vlad and Danny mentor/parent-ish, ongoing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write a 'lab' fic, although only the first two chapters take place there. The main difference between this AU and the canon timeline is the GiW being capable at their jobs. Thanks for reading!

He always recognized the tests. They experimented on him first, even for the new tests, assuming his form was more stable because he seemed larger and older. He doubted their theory; he was certainly better able to force himself to keep the ghost form, but that was weakness rather than strength. Even after all these months, he suspected Daniel's human form was in better shape. Daniel had certainly gotten more human food lately, and had learned how to keep himself from vomiting it up again afterwards. The cost of that food couldn't be thought of at any length.

This was one of the simpler tests, stunning in its calm cruelty. For him, it had not lasted so long. He was already theorizing in the back of his own mind about the reasons, suspecting it had to do with leaning more and more on the ghost form to survive. Daniel's own remaining humanity was what was punishing him. It was information their captors could not access due to their refusal to accept the dual nature of their prisoners. They'd never come to the same conclusions. Listening to their guesses was infuriating. Listening to Daniel was unbearable.

They'd put some sort of wide block behind Daniel's teeth, holding his tongue down. He hadn't been quite able to determine why he couldn't phase through it when he'd experienced it himself, but supposed it was some smaller form of the bindings they used to hold ghosts still. The purpose was obvious and two-fold, to keep the victim's mouth open if he threw up from the shock, and to keep him from being able to speak. It didn't silence them, of course. Daniel was making the most horrible noises now, long desperate moans that sounded as if they might well belong to a proper ghost.

He was still looking up at his arms in terrified anticipation, waiting for the next blow. If the monsters outside were to be trusted, this test had gone on for nearly three hours. Daniel's eyes were wide and unfocused, forcing tears and sweat out of the way with occasional short fits of blinking. His arms, bound up and above his head, looked almost normal again. After the third blow, he'd thrown up on himself, although the peculiar mix of green and brownish-red was dried across his front now. After the first hour, he'd started foaming at the mouth, a miserable and dehumanizing state that at least seemed to be cleaning his lips and chin a little.

Daniel was not looking in the right direction to really be forewarned. The watching man/ghost saw one of the scientists outside nod to another, and the control was pressed again with little fanfare. He could hear Daniel make a panicked choking noise as the device moved, but there was very little time to brace one's self between the device's movement and the pain.

Each of his arms took the blow solidly again, a simultaneous hit, knocking each arm crooked at the elbow. The dull crack was muffled by Daniel's agonized, hysterical howling. The boy's eyes had begun to roll back in his head again, no longer looking directly up at the source of torment. The man doubted the boy could force himself to levitate anymore. If he had been a normal human, he'd certainly have died of shock long before now. As it was, his arms took on an unhealthily dark green glow, looking distended and pulled down by the weight. It was not like internal bleeding, not quite, but it was a sign of the trauma and his body's desperate attempts to start knitting itself together again, in its own peculiar way.

When the experiments had started, he'd transformed back into a human at very little instigation. They both had. Over time, the human bodies grew too weak to support them. Now, he suspected that without a deliberate effort, neither of them would return to that state until they were exhausted enough that both sides were about to die. It would be a lovely surprise for those outside to see the human corpses they'd leave behind, he hoped. Even when the two of them were alone in their separate containment, even when he tried to comfort his fellow prisoner in the meager ways left to them, he didn't truly believe either of them would escape this. There was no real outside world in his mind any longer. The world was this room, with humans wandering in and out to observe through the glass like… well, like ghosts. If they didn't occasionally enter the containment units to adjust some sort of equipment, he'd have started suspecting humans didn't exist, either. Just an illusion seen through glowing glass.

The arms didn't have to hold a solid shape. The seeming bone was a result of the urge to believe themselves possessed of a human form. The blow was as much psychological as physical in torment, but to a ghost the two were intimately connected. A ghost's body was a reaction to the state of its mind and its environment. It took experimentation and effort to deliberately change one's own shape. An easier way to change a ghost was simply to show, with great force, some new reality and force the ghost into it. It had been easier for him, at least. It couldn't possibly have lasted this long. He'd have gone insane, and he knew that had come later.

The disgusting color was starting to fade a little, the arms taking on a more normal shape despite the strains on them. Daniel was mumbling something, perhaps no longer remembering that he couldn't quite talk, shaking his head slowly and staring up at them with the same horror of before. Naturally, he wanted them to stop healing to the form he thought arms should have. The attacks would end then. A handful of sobs shook his body, unrestrained, while he twisted slightly in his binds. The peculiar tail he tended to manifest flicked against the floor weakly, like a dying animal's last twitches.

As his struggles seemed to change from agony to fear, the men outside came to a decision and started the process yet again. Certainly a human boy would have gone mute by now, unable to scream anymore. Daniel's voice went higher, incoherent in trapped pain.

He wondered idly if the boy at least didn't recall where he was anymore, how long this had gone on. That sort of fugue was common, further into an experiment. It was a mixed blessing. You awoke from that shock spared some portion of memory of pain, but not sure quite how far you had been debased, losing grip on yourself. That sort of mental escape had cost him his name many years ago. He could scarcely recall who he'd been, before coming here. Every day, when their torturers were gone and the two of them were alone, he'd repeat the boy's name to him so he'd remember. Daniel. No last name, no sense in reminding him of his family. But a human name.

Finally, something was changing. He didn't suppose the boy was present enough to notice immediately, but the arms were still dangling limp from the blow, yet their color was still improving. The dark peach of his ghost form's skin, instead of mottled green bruises. And the seeming elbow, it was still nowhere to be seen. The effect would have been unsettling, if he hadn't seen these effects so many times before, but it certainly didn't look human. It was as if the boy's body were suspended by putty. Outside, the white-clad men were starting to chat excitedly.

The boy's face cleared a little, although under the stains of his torture it was hard to tell. He let out an odd, choked questioning noise as he looked up at himself, barely audible. He was starting to see it, too. Good. Whatever distaste Daniel might normally feel at seeing himself so inhuman would be dulled by the previous traumas, and he could realize this meant an end to the test. If nothing else, a change other than the distortions caused by the blows might distract his mind.

It wasn't altruism. He knew that. If he'd hated the boy to the deepest part of his core, hated him more than he hated the humans out there, he'd still have wanted him to hold on a little longer. Being alone so long in this place had utterly unmanned him. The idea of the boy leaving, through death or entirely self-absorbed madness, was more terrifying than anything those outside could do to him. He could not speak very well anymore, despite listening to the men outside, but he still treasured the halting conversations in the dark more than anything he could recall.

The bindings were released abruptly, as the ones outside were unconcerned with injuring a ghost simply by dropping him. The way the boy slumped to the ground was strange, limp beyond exhaustion, as if all of his bones had followed suit with the bones that instinctively vanished in his legs and the bones that had been trained to go fluid in his arms. Moaning helplessly, the boy started to curl up on himself in ways no human could, looking like a snake making a nest of itself, pulling himself tighter in to try to deny the world outside. He didn't react when the cage opened, and only whimpered pitifully as they freed his mouth, held him up and cleaned his front with a harsh spray of water. His body was strange under the outside forces, offering no resistance, bending in awkward ways with no obvious signs of discomfort beyond his exhaustion and burnt-out terror. When they dropped him to the floor, he curled up again in an unnatural pile and made soft, sad noises as they walked out to discuss their findings. Typically, they turned the lights off as they left, as if the room were now empty.

The darkness didn't bother him anymore. The darkness meant they were alone. The darkness was safety. He waited a few minutes more as Daniel's cries went on, letting the boy have some time to let out that pain and fear. But letting it go on too long was risky. It wasn't good to think about the experiments after they were over. You'd begin to think ahead, too, foreseeing the inevitable pain that would intrude on your world again. He had come to the understanding long ago that he could minimize his own misery when they weren't present, choose to simply forget what he was and where he was, what would happen when the lights came on again. For now they were safe, and that was all he could afford to acknowledge.

"Daniel." His voice was soft, affectionate. "Daniel, you need to come back now."

In response, he got a slightly louder moan, not quite a coherent denial. Of course he didn't want to pull himself out of his grief and agony. For years, the man had thought the same way. That if he let himself fall down low enough, eventually he'd die of that pain. He wasn't so fortunate, and he found his suffering continued while he still mourned over what had happened before. In the long run, giving up to that despair only made it worse.

"Daniel, you need to speak." He wouldn't give up. The boy was all he had. "Say something."

At first the terrible moans went on, but they began to take on a new tone, some change in his voice. He was coming back. Finally, the boy spoke, and the man was faint with relief. "I can't..."

"You can. It's over now. Now you're here with me." It also helped to pretend that the room when the lights were on and the room when the lights were off were different places. He'd long since gone half-mad from being trapped in the narrow tube, too narrow to stretch out his arms fully, far too narrow to sleep in any position but fetal. Years and years of the same room, the same tube, only the agony and the lights differing. At least in the dark he could imagine he was somehow transported, taken to a place outside of the room, some spot he half-remembered from his life as a human. Details faded, it was too painful to recall what he'd lost in full, but he tried to focus on his memories of the sky at night, to imagine that if he looked up he would see stars.

The boy had wanted to be an astronaut. When he'd first arrived, he'd told the man about his life outside, wonderful knowledge that had once been lost given back with the helpful distance of someone else's recollection. Daniel had said in all earnestness that he was a superhero. The foreign lunacy, so different from the man's own madness, was charming. "Keep talking, Daniel. Do you remember?"

There was another long pause, but the moaning had stopped. Finally, in a near whisper, he answered, "Yes. I'm Danny."

"You are. Where are you?" The question was soft and fond, not demanding. Daniel had come back.

Silence fell again, but the man was patient. They had no reason to rush. "Outside." It was another whisper, and less sincere than the earlier ones, as if he were giving the response that he knew was expected without really believing it. The man wasn't surprised Daniel went on to add, a bit louder, "But I'm _not_."

"You are." His own voice was confident. "Can you see?"

"No." Daniel's voice had dropped to a mumble again.

"Then you might be outside." He considered the darkness for a moment before adding, "Unless there's somewhere else you'd rather be?"

"Home. I want to go home."

"That's not an option," he interrupted, almost before Daniel had finished speaking. Some fantasies were too dangerous to entertain. He added, more gently, "Is there anywhere else?"

Daniel was quiet a long time before he answered, almost begrudgingly, "Sam's house."

Sam was one of his friends. Sam and Tucker. One was a girl and one was a boy, but both had boy's names and he had trouble remembering which was which. It wasn't really important, since he'd never meet them and Daniel would never see them again. "All right. Sam's house. The lights are off. What did you do today?"

"Played Doomed." Daniel's voice was growing a little stronger now, as he let himself be drawn into the fantasy. It didn't take long for their ghostly bodies to recover. That was why Daniel's pain had lasted so long. The man forced himself to stop thinking of that, it wouldn't help either of them to think about that.

"It's a video game," Daniel added helpfully.

"That sounds nice." He vaguely recalled the concept of video games, although he supposed they must be very different by now, years later. Years and years... "How do you play that?"

"Badly, compared to Sam." Daniel didn't laugh, but a touch of humor had entered his voice at the small joke. "I'm about even with Tucker. It's a first-person shooter..."

He listened to Daniel's description of the game, putting in polite questions to draw the conversation out even though he only understood a small fraction of what Daniel was talking about. "That sounds very fun."

"It is." Daniel paused, and the man was trying to think of some new topic when he said, "Maybe when we get out, I can show you how to play."

That was another fantasy that he'd long given up on, too painful to contemplate. He wasn't sure why he never tried to disabuse Daniel of the notion that either of them would leave this place, knowing that it was false hope. Maybe he wanted to feel that hope vicariously. It was rather selfish of him, but somehow it made him happy to hear Daniel speak of freedom with conviction, as though it were only a matter of time. "Thank you, Daniel. I'm sure I'll enjoy that."


	2. Chapter 2

It was heat. The ghost body formed grotesque bubbles as he cooked, greenish splotches that stretched his non-skin and burst to add new agony as he felt something like bare nerve exposed to air. He screamed and cried. There was no use in trying not to, a very early lesson. It was odd to think he'd ever imagined that might be possible. Surely he'd been insane in some different way, even before his arrival.

When darkness filled the room again, he still felt weak, his body aching from its effort to rebuild itself. Breathing was instinctual, even in the ghost body, and it had taken some effort to force himself to stop taking in the scalding air. Now he tried to force himself to breathe again, and more importantly to think, to pull his mind away from the immediate memory of pain.

"Hey. Hey, do you hear me?" Daniel was speaking. Not the calm, steady encouragement the man gave, but urgent attempts to pull him back from the edge he'd been pushed to. "Blue guy? You need to talk, right? Come on..."

Just as he was afraid of being left alone, so was Daniel afraid of losing his only companion. It was quite touching, really. He took a few shuddering, weak breaths, the lingering fear of choking pushed back by the cooled air. "Yes. Yes, Daniel."

He heard Daniel let out a heavy breath, a sign of relief. "Okay. Where are you?"

Daniel didn't really believe it, not yet, but he tried. Closing his eyes, the man forced himself to remember and forget at the same time. "Outside."

"Right. Great." There was still a tremor in Daniel's voice. Sometimes, when they were experimenting on the man, Daniel would scream at them, demand and then beg that they stop. He even cried on occasions, as if feeling some of the same pain. There was no point, not really, the humans wouldn't listen. Eventually Daniel would give up. He wasn't sure how he felt about that, even though he never reciprocated when Daniel was being hurt, knowing it was useless. "We have to talk about something."

"Yes." He was repeating himself. Even with the stars fixed in his mind, it was still all he could do to not remember what had just happened to him. "You have to start."

"All right." Daniel's breathing was starting to even out. "I have something. A few months ago I went to my first school dance."

Sometimes it was hard to understand how young Daniel was. The man felt ancient. "That's good. What did you wear?" It was the most insignificant detail he could think of.

"I have a grey suit. My mom..." His voice trailed off, then began again with the same determined strength. "And I wore a dress shirt and a blue tie."

"I see." He couldn't quite find another question. The sky in his mind flickered dangerously, threatening to return to the dark room. "Keep going."

"I got to take a really popular girl. Paulina. She's the prettiest girl in school," Danny went on helpfully. "It didn't go all great, though, she wound up fighting with my best friend, and then Sam turned into a dragon."

Like the claims of superheroics, Daniel's stories were always colorful. It hardly mattered that the man believed little of them. "That must have been unpleasant."

"Yeah. She was huge, too. And blue. And strong, and breathed... Anyway, my dad... _Anyway_ , I managed to help her turn back. It was all because of some cursed ghost necklace." A few false starts weren't unusual, but at least Daniel had learned to redirect himself. "The necklace was gold. It was a bunch of thick pieces, but really close around the neck, kind of like a choker? And there was a green stone in the center."

Little details added life to the story. "What happened to the other girl?"

"She kinda ditched me for another guy. But it wasn't all bad. Sam and I wound up dancing a little." That part of the story over, Danny switched to details again. "Paulina wore this pink dress and had pink gloves on. It looked nice with her eyes, she has green eyes. Sam had this black and purple dress. She looked good too. I mean, when she wasn't a dragon."

"I assumed."

"You'll like Sam," Danny went on, a bit pushy, but it was doubtlessly important to him. "Tucker, too. I'll introduce you."

"Yes." Now he could see the stars clearly. He was fine. Nothing was wrong. "I'll look forward to it."

* * *

The ground was shaking. At first the man assumed it was some very peculiar experiment, but that couldn't be right, there was no one outside monitoring. Experiments never happened in the dark, unless they damaged his eyes in the process.

Then he assumed he was imagining it, but Daniel's voice rang out, alarmed. "What's going on?"

"I don't know." He really didn't. How _strange_. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah... I'm flying now. The shaking's just weird. Do you think there's an earthquake?"

"No." Daniel's first suggestion was good. He concentrated and forced himself up off the ground. Now he wasn't bothered by the instability underneath, only the odd sounds. Something, somewhere, was straining apart...

"Do you hear that?" Daniel tended to ask silly questions when he was nervous. "It sounds like metal twisting. Like a girder or something."

"I don't know." The man was starting to grow agitated. Pain was familiar. Darkness was familiar. This, this wasn't anything he understood, it could be something new, something worse...

"Maybe somebody's breaking out." There was a breathless excitement in Daniel's voice. "You think we'll..."

Daniel's question was interrupted by a thundering noise and the ground leaping up, smashing against the man's body. It didn't hurt, not really, but the impact and the strangeness of it all stunned him. For several moments he laid on the ground, before realizing that he was stretched out flat, a sensation he'd entirely forgotten. The edge of the cylinder that contained him was under his legs, faintly uncomfortable. He couldn't make any sense of it.

"Come on!" Now Daniel's voice was harder, firm. The man opened his eyes. Their containment pods were just far enough apart that the ghostly glow couldn't quite give details in the dark, only the reassurance that the other was still there. But Daniel was somehow _over_ him, his expression clear from the faint illumination of his body. His eyebrows were drawn down, mouth set, and his hands reached around the man's arm, pulling him up. "We gotta go, we gotta go _now_!"

Where could they go? There was no real outside, it was a fantasy. The boy was unnaturally strong as a ghost, and finally lifted the man partially over a shoulder before flying up. Intangibility was a familiar tingle, one of the simpler powers granted to a ghost. He'd never felt it shared from someone else, though, and finally closed his eyes to escape the utter disorientation of seeing collapsed rooms and piles of debris as they passed through. When an odd chill hit, he realized with astonishment that there was a breeze, and opened his eyes again.

The outside was real. Below them, a building half-collapsed, odd inhuman beings also fleeing into the night, the sounds of howls and shifting rock and men shouting. Around the building, there was a black flat surface, and beyond that trees. A forest. The building was isolated, somehow he'd known that, although he couldn't remember how he'd learned it. He closed his eyes again, dizzy.

Other than the sound of wind and of Daniel's breath, quickened with urgency and fear, it was nearly as easy to pretend he was back in the building as it had once been to pretend he was outside. Daniel carried them for a period of time the man couldn't define, but it certainly felt long. When they paused, and Daniel lowered them both to the ground, he could no longer hear the sounds from the building.

"Oh, man. Oh man." Daniel's breath was too fast, now, near hyperventilation. The man opened his red eyes in concern, to try to look the boy over and be sure he was all right. Curling up, Daniel tucked his head between his knees and folded his arms over it, as if hiding himself. "We're out. I can't believe it. I can't believe we're out."

He could sympathize deeply with that sentiment. A sudden irrepressible urge took him, and the man glanced up to see the real night sky, between the pine branches overhead. It was surprisingly similar to his imaginings. The main difference was how _huge_ it was. Even with the trees cutting off some of it, it was overwhelming, too big to be understood. With a strange rush he felt that he'd begun flying again. No, not flying, _falling_ , he was falling up, into that too-large sky...

When he came back to his senses moments later, Daniel had pulled out of his own fit and was now leaning over him, his eyes wide. "Hey! Hey, what are you doing? What's wrong with you? Come on, don't die on me now!"

The dizziness was starting to fade, but he squinted his eyes as he looked up at Daniel, trying not to see that sky again just yet. "I'm not dying."

"You were breathing weird. Then you fell over." Daniel was starting to calm down again, but there was still concern in his expression. "Do you feel sick?"

Agoraphobia. He had no idea where he'd learned the word, or why he recognized it so suddenly, but sometimes his memory was like that, odd useless bits floating up. "I'm not sick, either. I'm just..." The man paused. That wasn't true, not really. He was sick, just not physically ill. "I don't think I can walk yet."

"Okay." Danny looked up and around, taking in their surroundings. "I guess they're going to be pretty busy for a while, but I want to keep going. We can't let them catch up."

As dreamlike as the whole situation still seemed, he could agree with that much.


	3. Chapter 3

Travel had been surprisingly easy, once he'd gotten used to only looking a few feet ahead of himself to be sure he didn't run into anything. Most importantly, he couldn't look directly up. Otherwise, he just followed Daniel. The boy didn't seem to know exactly where he was going at first, but with no requirement for food and water unless they turned back to humans, wandering lost in the woods wasn't so dangerous. He was rather starting to enjoy it. He'd forgotten the smell of pine trees.

When they reached a human town, they stole food and human clothing, not difficult when they could simply walk into a house and take whatever they wanted without being seen. It was strange to be around people, although the fact that none of the humans could perceive them added a comforting sense of distance. He insisted on holding Daniel's hand while they were both invisible, just to be sure they didn't lose track of each other. Daniel seemed embarrassed by it, but didn't argue.

A map helped Daniel pinpoint where they were, and how they might get to his home. That goal seemed as much fantasy as escape had been, but the older half ghost had at least learned not to trust too much in presumed certainties. As he had once been able to protect himself and Daniel with his lies, Daniel was now protecting them with his faith. So long as Daniel believed there was some home to reach, the man would follow. He hardly had anywhere else to go.

"You've gotta let me go in first. I have to explain." Daniel was curled up, back to a tree and his head buried against his arms and knees. It was a rather defensive position, one he seemed to default to when they were still too long. They didn't travel at night, even though the ghost bodies seemed to need as little rest as they needed human food. It was a strain on the human forms underneath, just as the lingering edge of hunger persisted without true starvation, but neither was quite ready to let their guard down so much. "It'll be okay if I explain."

"Explain what?" He tried to be patient with the boy, let him decide for himself when to push on.

"What you are. What I am. It'll be okay." Daniel didn't seem to realize he was repeating himself, perhaps trying to convince himself as he convinced his travel companion. He looked up from his arms, frowning a little. "Can you take the human form? Just for a little while?"

"No." It wasn't that he wasn't capable. He'd changed back once in recent memory, to reassure Daniel that he wasn't alone with a ghost for company. Even a half-ghost couldn't quite bond with a ghost the way he might bond with a human. Ghosts had different mindsets, different priorities and perceptions. Several had been placed in the neighboring containment unit over the years, blending together in his memories, until the only clear recollection was watching as each was pushed too far and melted down to green slime. He would have faced a similar fate years ago, if it weren't for the determination of the men outside to not destroy their strange, seemingly unique sample. They tried to study him, to test his durability and strength and capacity for healing, but they didn't try to push him so hard that he died. It was amazing what he could survive. "It's too dangerous to be human. Those bodies are too weak."

"They won't understand if you show up like that, though," Daniel insisted, sitting up a bit straighter. "They'll think you're a normal ghost. And they'll try to... It'll just get bad really fast, okay?"

"All right." The younger man still wasn't making sense, but there was no sense in starting an argument.

"I need something to call you. I can't just keep calling you 'blue guy.' Can't you at least remember what your name started with? Or what it sounded like?" The change of subject wasn't quite natural, but Daniel seemed sincere enough about the question.

"No, I don't recall." After all, no one had called him by his name in years. That hadn't mattered so much back in that place, Daniel hardly had to specify who he was talking to, but it might become a problem if they were really going to start spending time around others. The thought of trying to talk to unknown humans was somehow unnerving. At least Daniel would be there.

"I guess I could name you something." Daniel leaned back against the tree, staring up through the branches at the stars. The boy really was much better suited to the outdoors. "Do you know any names you like?"

He liked Daniel, of course, but that wasn't a very practical option. The men outside of their imprisonment didn't call each other by proper names, just codenames. He hadn't thought about names seriously in years, other than helping remember Daniel's. "Nothing comes to mind."

"Maybe it'll come back to you." Daniel looked over again, frowning a bit. "How long _were_ you in there?"

It was a stupid question that Daniel already knew the answer to, but seemed to resist learning. Patiently, he repeated his usual answer. "I have no idea. Rather a long time."

"I just don't understand how you can forget everything from your life. You don't remember your family, or how you got there, or why you're part ghost? Nothing's even started to come back?"

Daniel was also young, and didn't understand some things. It wasn't entirely true that he didn't remember anything from before. He remembered a green flash, and pain. He assumed that was the moment his own body had become infused with ectoplasm, but couldn't be sure. Nothing leading up to it or following it was clear. "Does it matter? I remember you."

The look Daniel gave him was odd, not quite distaste or pity, as if he wasn't quite sure how he should respond. "Okay. We'll probably get home tomorrow night. My parents will help you too." He curled back up again, lowering his head to his knees. "It'll be fine then. They'll know what to do."

* * *

Daniel lived in a rather large city, although the man's only points of comparison were the town they'd visited before and vague recollection. Still, though they reached the outlying suburbs of Amity Park in the late afternoon, it was dark before they reached the actual house. It was a large, peculiar structure, a brick building with flashing signs and some odd metallic addition up top. The neighboring houses all looked fairly mundane, making the building stick out even more.

They'd gone through this city just as they'd gone through the earlier town, staying invisible to avoid inviting trouble. Daniel paused at the steps to his door, his grip tightening for a minute on the man's hand before letting go entirely.

"What are you doing?" If he couldn't see or feel Daniel, he couldn't be sure Daniel was there. If he couldn't be sure of where Daniel was, he couldn't be sure Daniel was all right.

"I have to go in alone. I'm sorry. It'll just be too messy if you go in with me." The streets were empty, so no one saw as Daniel seemingly appeared from nowhere. Two white rings drew over his body, revealing the human form again, now wearing a stolen t-shirt and jeans. Even if the clothes had fit him better, the gauntness of his frame and odd way he held himself gave away his weakness. He looked as if he might not make it up the stairs at all in this form. "I'll explain it. It'll be okay." Daniel had gone back to trying to reassure himself, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. "I just have to tell them."

"I'll go with you." It wasn't that he hadn't heard what Daniel said, but that was ridiculous and better ignored. If there might be some problem, something Daniel had to reassure himself over, then going alone was too risky, especially in the vulnerable human form.

"I said, stay out here. I'll come get you when it's safe." Daniel had a hand against the rail, as he tried to support his shaky human body. "Didn't realize I was so tired..."

"You should at least take the other form." He had absolutely no intention of returning to humanity so long as there might be some threat. He hadn't even dropped his invisibility. "Can you walk?"

"Yeah. I think so."

The trip up the staircase was agonizingly slow, even when he stepped behind Daniel to help support some of his weight. When he first touched Daniel's back, the boy jumped a bit, then seemed to understand what he was trying to do.

"Don't follow. Okay? Stay right here." Daniel's tone was growing a bit insulting. Of course, some of that might be the strain of moving, or the fear he clearly had of whatever was on the other side of the door. "Just wait and I'll come out when it's safe."

"All right. I'll wait." Really, when the boy said insane things like that, it was best to just agree, no matter what he really intended to do. Daniel obviously didn't have the strength to stay outside and keep arguing much longer, anyhow.

He knocked on the door, then rang the doorbell. A few moments passed, then the sound of the door being unlocked made Daniel stand up a little straighter. The door swung open, and a young woman not much older than Daniel himself was standing on the other side.

Daniel collapsed forward just as she reached out to him, her eyes wide. Still invisible, the older man almost reached forward to help hold Daniel, but the girl seemed to have a good grip on him, partially pulling him through the door while calling frantically over her shoulder, "Mom! Mom, Dad! It's _Danny_!"


	4. Chapter 4

He felt uncomfortable as he watched Daniel's family reunion, an awkwardness that hadn't been there when they had both passed humans unseen. Daniel had collapsed to his knees moments before his parents made it to the room, although his sister's support at least eased him to the ground. As soon as his parents arrived, the situation became a bit chaotic, reassurances and crying and hugging while Daniel was growing ever quieter, almost in a daze. He seemed barely aware of their words, his expression distant, although he leaned into his mother when she knelt in front of him and hugged him close again. Both of his parents wore strange jumpsuits, similar to the one on Daniel's ghost form, and his mother's had a hood which covered part of her face. Daniel didn't seem alarmed by it, so the man supposed that was normal here.

"Danny? Can you tell us what happened?" His mother's tone was cautious, clearly trying not to be too demanding, able to recognize his exhaustion.

"Was it a ghost?" His father, on the other hand, felt free to lean over his wife's shoulder and bark eager questions. And what an _odd_ question it was, too.

"No." Daniel's voice was barely audible. He smiled unpleasantly for a moment, as if enjoying the irony of the question, before making a faint moaning noise and leaning forward again, burying his face against his mother's shoulder. "Wasn't a ghost."

"Danny, who did this to you?" His sister was still crouching nearby him, although not getting between the boy and their parents. "We've got to call the police."

"No!" Daniel snapped awake at that suggestion, pulling himself away from his mother. His expression was open now, and frightened. The abrupt motion made him sway a bit, but he didn't fall over. "You can't call anybody, don't tell anybody I'm here!"

His parents looked puzzled, his sister suspicious, but none of them moved yet.

"Danny... what's going on?" His mother's voice was remarkably patient, but even with the odd hood concealing her expression the man could tell she was confused.

"I have to tell you something." Daniel lowered his head for a moment, staring down at himself. His voice was faint again, the immediate panic drained away by his ongoing exhaustion. "I have to show you something important, but you have to promise not to... you have to promise..."

His voice was starting to crack. It seemed Daniel's growing anxiety as they neared his house was from the fear of confessing what he was to his parents. The man, watching, wanted to reassure him but held back for now, knowing Daniel wouldn't appreciate the interruption.

"Sweetheart, your dad and I love you." His mother leaned forward to take one of his hands, the other pulling back her hood at last to reveal a caring but tense expression. "You can tell us anything, and we won't love you any less."

She had red hair, like her daughter, and purple eyes.

It had been years since the man had experienced an unwanted memory. He'd grown quite good at picking out which thoughts to entertain and which were too risky to be allowed. Of course, he'd also had few things to prompt recollection. The shock was all the more disconcerting for his inability to recall _why_ he knew those eyes, that face, an edge of memory that began to pound in his head and ears as immeasurably important and entirely without context. Tiny fragments of memory were just out of his reach, demanding his attention. They had worked on the project together. A green flash, and it was all over. He kept hoping to see her when he knew it was irrational, that he'd never see her again. He'd tried to hold onto that memory for too long, it only made it harder when he had to let the memory fade. She had purple eyes and red hair, he was dizzy, he felt ill... The agony of warring instincts in his mind, that he must remember and absolutely must not remember, was so wrenching that he barely noticed that he'd faded into visibility.

"Ghost!" Daniel's father shouted, as if anyone in the room might have missed the sudden appearance of a large blue man. At least the shouting pulled his mind back to the present. Even now, memory was too dangerous.

The shouting was to be expected. Both parents pulling out some odd sort of gun and aiming at him was not. It only took a few seconds to recognize the similarity to the weapons of their former captors, very different from a firearm meant for humans. So there was another reason Daniel had been afraid, his parents were ghost hunters. And yet he'd insisted they come here. He was a sweet boy, but really rather dim...

"Wait!" Daniel's transformation was a flash of light, enough to distract his parents for a crucial moment. In the ghost form he had some strength again, and floated up between them with his arms spread protectively, still staring at his parents with an odd mixture of hope and fear. He turned his head for a moment to almost growl, "I told you to wait _outside_!"

"Danny?" They were all staring in astonishment, and his sister was the first one to speak, standing up beside him and reaching out hesitantly. "Is that you?"

"Yes." The look the boy gave his family was almost guilty, but the terror seemed to be fading as he stood between his parents and the older half-ghost. The man wondered why; after all, he'd just leapt straight into the danger he'd feared. "It's me. Really."

"Honey..." His mother stepped forward, almost as hesitant as her daughter. Behind her, the father was glaring past Daniel at the blue ghost. "Are you dead?"

"No. I'm not dead." Daniel's face twitched into an almost-smile again, one which collapsed into a tense, haunted look that wasn't quite directed at her. "I'm not dead, I'm not a real ghost... I'm just... I'm..."

The boy had tried explaining that to the men who held them prisoner, despite being told it would do him no good. When his mother pulled him closer suddenly, holding the ghost body as she'd held the human form, the last edges of anxiety finally seemed to drain out of him and he went limp against her, closing his eyes.

"Danny?" His father was still watching the other man in the room warily, his aim not quite dropped. At least he hadn't tried to fire through his own son. "I think you need to tell us about your friend now."

After a moment, Daniel lifted his head again, looking at his father over his mother's shoulder. "He's like me. He's not really a ghost."

The man held still, not speaking for himself yet. He was eyeing Daniel's father with an equal return of caution. Even if Daniel felt comfortable enough to relax now, it wasn't wise for both of them to drop their guard.

"Will you tell us what happened now?" His mother stood up straight again, shifting one of her hands to his shoulder instead, as if reluctant to completely let go. "Who did this to you?"

"We got caught by ghost hunters." Danny's head was still down, now looking at the shifting ghostly tail beneath him instead of his legs. "He helped me out. We helped each other. I don't think he has anywhere else to go."

What a succinct summary of months of torture, or years in the older half-ghost's case. Perhaps it was easier to discuss when put in such simple, matter-of-fact words. Daniel's earlier stuttering and hesitation seemed almost gone now. Some of it might be credited the difference between his human body's exhaustion and the ghost body's durability, but most seemed to be thanks to the end of his fear that his parents would turn on him. Why would he even choose to return here, knowing that was a possibility? It was insane. The man continued to stare at Daniel's father distrustfully, unable to look too closely at the woman holding Danny.

"How did you—why are you—" His sister still seemed confused. "Danny, if you're not dead, how did you become a ghost?"

"I had an accident." He didn't look up at the question. His voice was flattening out a bit more, growing number. "I think I need to go to my room now."

His father and mother exchanged glances, but neither pushed the questioning further.

"Jasmine, why don't you go heat up some soup and get some water for your brother?" His mother put an arm around Daniel's shoulders, as if to guide him. "We'll be in his room."

The room was upstairs—fortunately, Daniel hadn't tried to return to the human form yet. They were halfway up when he turned around to look back down at the two men still standing near the entrance. "You should show them you're human too. So they know..."

"Come on, sweetie. We'll talk to your friend later." His mother gently urged him on. "I think you need to rest."

The boy's shoulders shuddered for a moment, but he listened to her and continued up the staircase, eventually going out of sight. It made the man agitated, after so much time together. Suppose this was some sort of trap, and they hadn't really accepted the ghostly Daniel as their son? If the other man downstairs hadn't been holding that same weapon, albeit no longer pointed right at him, he'd have followed upstairs immediately.

"My name's Jack. I'm Danny's dad." Jack was speaking slowly and clearly, as if he thought he were trying to communicate with someone very stupid. Then again, he hadn't heard the older half-ghost speak at all yet. "Who are you?"

"It doesn't matter." It didn't, not really. Whoever he'd been, surely that person was dead now despite the human form. The painful moment of near-memory before was just a remnant, barely real for its lack of direction. He frowned back at Daniel's father, then at the weapon in his hands. "If I'd wanted to hurt you, I'd have done it while you didn't know I was here."

Jack seemed taken aback for a moment, although the expression on his face was closer to awkward embarrassment than anger. He put the weapon away, which slightly surprised the half-ghost. "Uh, yeah, I guess... so, you're really human?"

"Part of me is." He kept watching the staircase where Daniel had gone, listening for some sign of trouble. "Who is she?" That wasn't what he'd wanted to say at all. Why had he asked that?

"Danny's mom? Her name's Maddie." Jack still looked a bit flummoxed. "So, what should we call you?"

Daniel had asked the same thing. The man still didn't have an answer, and didn't bother telling Jack. Instead, he began to move past him, toward the staircase, a bit more confident that he wasn't about to be shot in the back.

"Hey, where are you going?" Jack hurried after.

"To Daniel." He glanced back, frowning quellingly at the other man, but Jack didn't seem to notice. "He might need me."

"If Maddie thinks it's a good idea for us to go up there, she'll let us know." Jack's expression and tone were firm, although concern crossed his face too when he glanced up to where his son had gone. "I think Danny needs to be alone with her for a little bit."

Listening carefully once partway up the stairs, he heard something happening, but it didn't seem to be a fight. The distant sound was familiar. Daniel was sobbing, heavy broken noises that were faintly muffled as if he were crying into something. Or someone. For whatever reason, he'd held that little breakdown at bay until he was alone with his mother. The man tried not to be offended at being left out of that, and turned more fully to face Daniel's father. "Fine. I'll give them time."

"Okay. Great." It didn't seem Daniel's father could quite hear it, since he didn't react. Instead, Jack stared at the blue half-ghost for a few more minutes, before offering, "Hey, you want to come in the kitchen? We made hot dogs. Ghost hot dogs, even!"

The offer was so bizarre he had no idea how to respond. "I didn't realize hot dogs had ghosts."

"Well, I mean, they're not _ghost_ -ghosts, they're just ghosty... like you, I guess..." Jack's momentary enthusiasm lost some of its force, but he pressed on determinedly, "They're kind of green and glowy, but they're not bad! They make weird noises when you eat them, though."

And now he knew why Daniel seemed insane even before coming to that prison. He was learning all sorts of useful things today. "I'm not hungry." It wasn't true, but he floated past the orange-clad man again on his way downstairs, not bothering to set his feet down on the steps.

"You _look_ hungry." Jack took the steps two at a time to follow him down. "You don't have to have the hot dogs, I just thought I'd offer, we had them yesterday... How about soup? Jazz's making soup for Danny, maybe we should heat some up for you too."

The man wondered if Jack was trying to talk enough for both of them. "No, thank you."

"Look, would you do me a big favor?" Jack had managed to get enough speed up to circle around the man, making him stiffen with minor alarm, but the look on Jack's face was sheepish , not hostile. "Danny said you're really human. I _believe_ him, but could you just show me, so I don't feel so weird about you being a ghost in my house? Because normally I shoot at ghosts, but I'm pretty sure Danny'll be upset if I shoot you."

"Daniel wouldn't be the only one upset." He didn't like being human, not in body, though his mind was still closer to human than ghost. Even a healthy human body was too weak. The ghost bodies reflected some portion of the human form's degeneration, but his human form was horrifically distorted by the time he'd spent depending on its strength, before the ghost form became dominant. Daniel had been very disturbed by his first look at it, although he'd eventually taken some comfort from its existence. It was almost sadism that inspired the man to sit on the couch in the living room, waiting for Jack to come closer before he closed his eyes and forced the change to happen.

The ghost form returned moments after the human one showed. Jack was staring at him in shocked horror, the reaction he'd rather hoped for, as he smiled ghoulishly back.

"Satisfied?"

Jack's mouth moved for a few seconds, as if he wanted to speak but the words weren't coming out. Finally, Jack collapsed into a chair opposite him, still staring. "I..."

"Yes?" Really, it was more reaction than he'd expected. Daniel, as young as he was, hadn't been rendered entirely speechless at the sight of the human body.

"Vladdie?"

The tone in Jack's voice was disbelief rather than disgust. It was very confusing. "What?"

"It is you! It's got to be!" Jack was growing more agitated, and leaning forward as he began to talk more quickly, almost urgently. "I thought you were dead! They told us you died in the hospital!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." It wasn't entirely true. Something about it seemed familiar the more Jack pushed, not quite as powerful a recollection as with Maddie, and painful in a low-level way like a growing headache.

"Vlad, what happened to—never mind! It doesn't matter. It'll be all right now." Jack seemed to be so caught up in his enthusiasm that he was barely aware of the other man's increasing tension. "We were best friends, we worked on the portal together! Don't you remember yet?"

The portal. There was an accident, a flash of green light, and everything had gone wrong after that. The details were still fuzzy, and he tried to push them away again, unable to handle them yet. He couldn't collapse while Daniel was still in distress, and certainly not while Jack was watching. But he kept one memory at hand.

"Vlad." It sounded strange to him, even now, as he realized it was right. He stared back at Jack's anxious, nearly guilty face. "I believe you're right. I think I am Vlad."


	5. Chapter 5

The rest of the conversation was a blur. Jack Fenton was talking to him, or rather at him, quickly and encouragingly, going over events that Vlad was apparently supposed to remember. He'd given up on listening; nothing Jack said seemed important after his name sunk in, and there was no time to let himself be drawn into memory while he still felt so uncertain in this place. He didn't think Jack noticed, since the man kept going.

Jasmine came out of the kitchen with a tray, but didn't pause to talk to them, only giving them both a strange look before making her way up the staircase. A moment later, she stepped back to the railing again, calling down into the living room. Her face was pale.

"Dad? Mom says you should come up now." She sounded a bit shaky, and Vlad assumed that meant Daniel was still in distress upstairs, making him more agitated. Despite knowing Daniel was with his mother, he found himself feeling that the boy was alone now.

"All right." Daniel's father stood up, then paused to look at Vlad as if uncertain. "You just stay here, okay, buddy?"

Even if they had once been friends, something Vlad couldn't recall, it had obviously been an extraordinary amount of time since they'd last met. They certainly weren't friends now. It didn't seem worth arguing over, so he nodded once, reminded of agreeing to stay outside after Daniel insisted. Jack seemed to accept that, and rushed up the staircase, not with eagerness but with the air of a man hurrying to help in an emergency. Vlad supposed it was.

His daughter came downstairs more gradually, the discomfort in her expression fading to be replaced by a wary curiosity. He wanted to get up and follow Jack upstairs, but forced himself to remain patient.

"Are you really a ghost?" Her question was the opposite of her father's, although with less sheepish hesitance and more open disbelief.

"Part of me is." He was beginning to feel very uncomfortable, not only in his separation from Daniel, but in the ongoing conversations the family seemed inclined to start. Even when speaking with Daniel, he tended to encourage the boy to talk more rather than speaking much himself. The time spent away from their prison had supplied a number of new sensations and impressions, but he somehow doubted anyone here would appreciate his ongoing rediscovery of life if he tried to explain it to them, and he had little else to speak of that wouldn't upset them. Regular, casual conversation was a talent he'd lost so long ago that he couldn't be sure he'd ever mastered it in the first place.

"I don't believe in ghosts." She didn't sit across from him, standing awkwardly to the side, trying not to be obvious about gawking at him. "Or I didn't, until now. How can you be a ghost and still be alive?"

"It's very unusual," he agreed mildly, deciding that if she was going to stare at him, he'd stare back at her. She looked a bit like her mother, and a bit like Daniel, but not at all like her father apart from the blue eyes. Daniel seemed to resemble his mother more, too.

"What really happened?" Jasmine shifted her weight a bit, and at least stopped staring directly at him. "I don't think our parents or Danny will tell me."

It wasn't the sort of thing a child should hear about, even if Daniel had gone through it when he was younger than her. "He told you. We were captured by ghost hunters."

"He looked like he hadn't eaten in forever. Like he was in some kind of shock." She had wrapped her arms around herself, now staring uncomfortably at the floor. "If I'm going to help him get better, I need to know something about what happened."

"You're too young to be responsible for that." At least, he thought so. "And the details would only disquiet you."

"He's my little brother." Jasmine looked at Vlad again, distress obvious on her face. "I might be young, but that doesn't mean he doesn't need me, or I can't help him. I'm more mature than most people my age. I can handle it. Just tell me."

"You have no idea what you're talking about." His words came out more harshly than he'd intended, but if she couldn't even take this little ounce of truth, she certainly couldn't bear the whole weight of what she asked for. "If you knew, you wouldn't look at your brother the same way. Either you'd pity him so much that you would ruin his attempts to reclaim normalcy, or you'd be so upset at what you learned that you wouldn't be able to stand being around him for the thought of it. Even your parents don't need to know most of it."

She looked surprised and offended, as if she was about to argue with him. He didn't have any patience for that, and vanished from sight, cutting the conversation short.

"Wait, where did you go?!" Jasmine looked around in alarm, but he ignored her, making his way upstairs and down the hall where Daniel had disappeared.

Daniel looked up for a moment as Vlad entered the room invisibly, but didn't say anything to his parents, and they didn't seem to notice the momentary distraction. His mother was sitting beside him on the bed, his father nearby on a chair that was clearly too small for him and looked ready to give out under his weight at any moment. Daniel's face was still wet, his green eyes seemed shadowed, but he wasn't crying out loud anymore. One of his arms wiped over his face quickly, cleaning the proof of his tears away.

"Do you think they'll be able to find you again, if you aren't in the ghost body?" His mother was speaking slowly, still patient. Vlad decided he approved.

"Yes." Daniel's voice was faint, and a bit scratchy. He was back in the same defensive position he'd taken while they traveled, his legs curled up. He didn't seem to be looking at his parents directly, and wasn't looking where Vlad stood, either. "I had my wallet on me... they know who I am."

"Well, they're not going to get you again." Unlike his mother, his father was emphatic, maybe a bit too loud, though clearly sincere. "Nobody's getting in here to kidnap my kids."

Vlad supposed Daniel probably wasn't taken from his home, but it still seemed like a rather reckless promise. With the ghost powers, he was far better suited to keeping Daniel safe.

"I don't know when they're going to come after me. Maybe they won't." Daniel didn't seem to believe that, even as he said it. "I guess... I don't think I should go back to school yet."

"You need to get your strength back, before we worry about that. Does it help the human body when you eat in the ghost body?" Maddie asked.

"I don't know. I think so." The boy's wince was barely noticeable. "They only fed us when... they didn't feed us a lot. I don't think they believed we really needed it, instead of just wanting it."

Food required cooperation. It was a meager prize for what it cost them, and yet logic meant they should accept it, because the other option was to be forced into cooperation by less pleasant means. That was the only time the men outside bothered to speak directly to them, and even then, it sounded like they thought they were cajoling a poorly trained animal, not negotiating with a person. The hunger was milder in the ghost form, an echo of the human form's suspension on the edge of starvation. Compared to the experiments, it was only a low-level pain, something that could be ignored, though it was comforting to ease it with human food.

His parents had given each other a concerned look at that comment, but didn't press for further details.

"Let us know if you want anything else. Some more water, or..." Maddie frowned slightly. "We don't want to feed you too much right away."

"I'm not that hungry," Daniel answered, his voice empty. "I think maybe I should sleep some. I'm really tired."

"All right." Maddie petted his back, obviously trying to be reassuring. "Your dad or I can stay..."

"I'll be okay." Daniel had looked up at Vlad as he said it, but didn't tell his parents what he was looking at. "I don't want to talk about it anymore right now."

"You can tell us about it whenever you feel comfortable. We'll always be ready to listen." Maddie stood up, and Jack followed suit, though both of them were looking at Daniel as if they wanted to stay.

"We'll come in and check on you some anyway, okay? Just to make sure you're sleeping all right." Jack leaned down a bit closer to Daniel, one of his heavy hands set on Daniel's shoulder for a moment. "You sure you don't want me to stay? It'd be like a sleepover!"

"I'm sure." Daniel gave him an awkward half-smile in response. "Thanks, Dad. Mom." The effort he'd put into smiling seemed to drain more of the energy out of him, and he curled up a bit tighter again, not watching as his obviously concerned parents stepped out of the room.

Once they were gone, Vlad felt free to return to visibility. Daniel took a moment to turn his gaze back to Vlad, and gave him nearly as ghastly an imitation smile.

"It's been a very busy afternoon." Vlad walked closer, to sit in the chair Jack had been using. "How are you?"

"Okay." Daniel stared hollowly at the floor. "Confused. Scared. I don't know. I guess some part of me thought it would be over, if I could just get home safe."

"Your family is lively." Some of them more so than others. After a slightly awkward pause, he added, "I seem to be Vlad."

"What?" That at least got Daniel's attention, and he frowned over at Vlad not in distress but confusion. "What's that mean?"

"Your father apparently knows me. Or my human form." In the first moments after the name registered in his mind, Vlad had thought it was an incredible coincidence that he knew Daniel's family. Maybe something more than coincidence, closer to fate. The time he spent not listening to Jack had allowed him to think about it more reasonably, and then he realized it wasn't a coincidence at all. It was a pattern, two people caught in lab accidents thanks to the same man's experiments. "It seems right. Vlad was, is my name."

"Vlad, huh." Daniel stared at him a moment longer. "I guess you look like a Vlad."

He wasn't sure what to make of that. Instead, he changed the subject again. "Do you think it's safe for us to stay here, in one place? They could probably find us here easily."

"We can't just run all our lives. And this is the safest place I can think of." Daniel's gaze had wandered, now looking out of one of his bedroom's windows. The curtains were pulled back, revealing the night sky and stars. "My parents were always preparing for a ghost emergency, not a government agent emergency. But I think they'll be able to keep anybody from breaking in too easily."

"Did you actually want to sleep? We could talk more about it after you've rested," Vlad offered.

"I guess I'm not. I'm tired, but I don't think I'll sleep much." Daniel looked at him again, his expression numb. "It feels like this isn't real. Like some part of me is still there."

"I don't think this is a hallucination," he answered bluntly. "There are too many small, clear details. And it's gone on steadily for a long time."

For some reason, that seemed to disturb Daniel, and the boy winced a bit before sighing. "I didn't mean I seriously thought... never mind. I keep wondering how we got out. What happened?"

"They obviously caught something they couldn't handle."

"It had to be pretty strong to bust up the building like that." Daniel put his head down against his knees again. "Maybe it's just a matter of time before we start hearing news reports about some crazy super-powerful ghost running around destroying things."

"Good. I hope it does." Daniel gave him a startled look for that, so he explained, "The more dangerous and powerful it is, the fewer resources they'll have to spare in tracking us down. I sincerely hope all of their other escapees begin to stir up trouble in the human world."

"But other people might get hurt. Normal people." Agitated now, Daniel shifted his position, his legs stretching back out and merging into the flickering tail. "Wanting people to get hurt just so we can stay safe a little while longer is..."

"Practical. You may have fantasies of heroics, but those fantasies could result in both of us being captured again." It was cold, and he almost felt guilty for the look Daniel gave him, but this was for the best. "We both should keep our heads down. They may not have many resources to spare, but getting involved in ghostly trouble, even in the name of protecting humans, will draw more of their attention to us. I'm still not certain I should even allow you to stay here."

"Allow me?" Daniel sat up straighter, his expression annoyed. "Look, I want us both to be safe, but that doesn't mean you can order me around."

He hadn't meant to imply that he'd order Daniel to leave. That would likely do no good. He meant that he'd take Daniel away himself, to some safer location. "I'm not trying to order you around. I'm willing to give you some time with your family first."

Daniel was still staring at him with an edge of suspicion, something that made Vlad faintly uncomfortable, before turning away again. "You need to get used to how to talk to people again."

It seemed like a non sequitur, but better than continuing the previous line of conversation. "I think that will take time. I haven't had much practice, until recently."

"Right." Daniel gave him a measuring look, then unexpectedly pushed up off the bed, floating slightly above the ground. Drifting over to a door, he opened it to reveal a slightly cluttered closet inside, and floated up a bit further to reach something rolled up on a shelf at the top. When he came back, he handed it to Vlad, and explained, "It's a sleeping bag. So you don't have to sleep on the floor if you stay here."

Touched, he held the sleeping bag in his lap for the moment. "Thank you, Daniel."

"The couch downstairs folds out into a bed. If you wanted to use that instead." The offer was given hesitantly, and the look on Daniel's face was faintly anxious.

"I think I'll stay here for now." Vlad leaned back in the chair, giving the room a more serious look. It was a bit childish, suited to a young teenager who wasn't quite old enough to put away his childhood memories or toys just yet. True to Daniel's stated goal, there were some posters on the wall about NASA, and a few model spacecraft on display. He was somehow surprised that they were still so easily recognizable, and wondered how far the space program had advanced since he'd last been... since before he'd been indisposed. Daniel's descriptions, while enthusiastic, were hampered by his own youth and lack of education.

Vlad somehow knew that he'd been very intelligent before being trapped there. Listening to the men outside and forming his own theories based on what they said had given him something to focus on when the lights were on. That became particularly important after Daniel had arrived, and Vlad was not distracted by his own pain.

"Okay." Relaxing faintly, although Vlad wasn't sure the boy had realized he'd grown tense, Daniel leaned back onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling of his room. "I still feel out of place, though. Like the house is the same, but I'm not the same person who belonged here."

"What happened to you will always make you feel different from others," Vlad predicted. He certainly had no fantasies of merging with human society again. "But even if you don't feel like the same person, the person you are now has a chance to recover, now that we're free."

"I don't want to be caught again. I can't go back there." Daniel still looked up, not facing Vlad. His voice was faint, as if speaking less to Vlad and more to himself. "I would rather die. I wanted to die there, too."

Death for the human bodies was not an option. It would not help them escape, would only rob them of what little they had managed to retain of themselves. Even if the men outside were surprised to see the human corpses, they would still have a ghost to experiment on. Thanks to being imprisoned near true ghosts, Vlad understood that he wouldn't go through that change unaltered, and whatever haunted him most in life would become the center of his universe once his human half was gone.

He would become a ghost that sat in a tube and was hurt, and he'd never again be anything more. The only safe death was both forms passing at once, body and soul dying together.

"If you had truly died, you would never have escaped," he answered a bit more lightly than the topic deserved, trying to pull Daniel's train of thought back from that edge. "And if I had died, I would not have been able to help you."

"Yeah." Daniel tilted his head to glance over at Vlad. "I need to stop thinking about it."

"That's easy enough to manage," Vlad pointed out.

After a momentary pause, Daniel pushed himself back up to a sitting position, and let out a heavy breath. "Okay. This one's kind of embarrassing, all right?"

"That's fine." The concept of embarrassment was alien to him now. "Go on."

"Well, there was this big party that all the popular kids were going to. Cheerleaders and jocks, you know?"

It was rather strange to sit so near Daniel while he spoke. Vlad had grown used to listening to him in the dark while barely making him out across the room. Seeing his expression as he talked made the story more interesting than its mere content.

"And the guy holding it was going to let me go, but only if I got this expensive outfit to wear to the party. I really wanted to fit in, so..."

The story was of little consequence, although Vlad's knowledge of Daniel's father helped him make sense of a few of the background details. Apparently Daniel felt like he'd learned something from the experience. As he talked, the darkness started to fade from his expression, and he even smiled a little when describing the cache of teddy bears he found in the popular boy's closet. The fight description was also lively, with Daniel going to the trouble of gesturing to show how it had gone, a visual aid that had been missing before.

By the time the story was done and Daniel had described learning his lesson about the power of friendship, or something like that, he'd been talking for a little over an hour. Vlad was getting tired, and suspected Daniel was as well, the urgent need to travel having passed and the ability to relax making their exhaustion more noticeable. Before either of them went to sleep, the door opened for a quick check from Jack.

Vlad turned invisible as the door began to open without thinking about it. Daniel gave the space he'd previously occupied a sour look but didn't say anything. After a few words of reassurance, and offers of food or water, Jack left the room again, leaving them alone.

"I think I'm ready to go to bed." Daniel yawned widely to make his point. He pulled the sheets over his ghost form instead of trying to switch back to the human body. " _Does_ it help if we do stuff that's good for the human body as ghosts?"

"I believe so." Vlad stood up, looking for an appropriate spot for the sleeping bag. "I'm going to turn the lights off."

"Okay." As the room went dark, Daniel spoke up one last time. "Why're you avoiding my parents?"

"Because I don't want to speak with them." He didn't want to speak with Maddie because her presence still tugged at something subconscious that he wasn't quite ready to handle. He didn't want to speak with Jack because he didn't want to speak with Jack.

"You're going to have to eventually." Daniel sighed. "I guess there's no rush. Good night."

"Good night, Daniel."


	6. Chapter 6

In the beginning, it hadn't been all that scary. A little scary, sure, but Danny Phantom fought ghosts all the time, and they were all a little scary, even the goofy ones. On some level, he'd still believed that he'd win, that if he fought and believed hard enough that he'd earn a happy ending. It was a truth so fundamental that he'd never thought about it, just took it for granted.

He hadn't been entirely aware when they first put him in the cage. They'd had to knock him around before they could catch him, and he'd lost track of Tucker and Sam during the course of the chase, focused on trying to get away. Danny had reverted to the human form before being imprisoned, and was still bruised and aching from the end of the fight. He'd thought that, now that he'd lost the ghost form, they'd realize he was a human. He hadn't thought about the fact that he set off his parents' ghost detectors even in the human form. Sometimes it was almost painful to realize what a stupid kid he'd been.

They wouldn't really talk to him, and that only annoyed him at first. They talked to each other, discussing the dips and peaks of his ectoplasmic energy and the human 'shell' that he kept trying to explain was the real him, comparing changes caused by various kinds of stress, and comparing him to the other sample. Eventually, they talked at him, telling him what to do and ignoring whatever he said in return. He thought maybe he'd have gone crazy just from that, if there hadn't been someone else to talk to, someone who didn't pretend not to hear him.

The other sample looked more like a ghost, with blue skin and red eyes. There was something hungry about him that went beyond the thinness of his frame, unsettling even before the two of them spoke. Just before the lights were turned out at the end of the first day, the man had smiled at him, a humorless smile with sharp teeth.

"I didn't think there would be another one." His voice had been almost conversational, but there was something about it that set Danny on edge. "I suppose if it happened once it could happen again."

"What could happen again?" Danny had tried squinting to see more easily through the dark, but the faint glow of the glass between them made it difficult to make out more than general details. "What are you talking about?"

"A human and a ghost. Very unusual. Very strange. I thought I was unique. I wonder if they'll still have a use for me?" He had sounded faintly amused by the question, as if what they were discussing was of no consequence at all. "But you're so young. It'll be much harder on you."

Danny hadn't been able to make any sense of the other ghost at first. He'd spoken in rambling, disconnected sentences, only improving after Danny had been with him for a while and they'd grown used to talking to each other. "What does that mean? Aren't you a ghost?"

"Well, yes. Some of me." The man had shifted his weight, and despite the difficulty in focusing on his features, Danny imagined he could see that same awful smile. "And part of me is human. Would you like to see?"

He hadn't been sure he did, but nodded anyway before adding out loud, "Okay, fine. Show me." He didn't believe it yet.

The black rings that drew over the older man had been clear even through the glass. What was left was a man almost skeletal in frame, hunched over, the heavy shadows cast over his body only making the deformation of his shape more prominent. He'd barely seen the human body before the ghost form returned, but it was definitely too long.

Days had passed and the room had begun to look very different to Danny. His initial confidence wavered and finally collapsed, replaced with anxious desperation. The other man had predicted the change, told him with strange confidence what was going to happen to Danny's mind as time went on. Like so much the man said, Danny had ignored it at first, unable to accept what his reality had become. Now, looking back, he thought it would have been much worse alone. The desperation turned to anger, something that could drive him to endure the pain but which had no outlet, his separation from his captors too absolute for him to strike at them with anything but words which they ignored. Then he fell into emptiness, like the despair before but seemingly absolute, a belief that there was no use in holding on any longer and that he should simply lay down and wait to die. He had tried to ignore the other man's insistence that he couldn't stop there, that there was some level past that too, and that giving into that feeling wouldn't help. He'd believed that he was used up, and he couldn't possibly have the strength to recover from the depth he'd fallen to. Maybe that misery would have lasted indefinitely if he'd been alone, but he wasn't alone. The blue half-ghost had pulled him out of it with strange patience. Eventually the madness of the other man made perfect sense and Danny had realized that he was beginning to drift into that same mental space, learning to divide himself into two. There was the Danny who was hurt or watched the other man hurt and the Danny who hid in the dark and described his life, reliving it through those stories. The transition wasn't smooth at first, but it was better than the despair, and more productive than the anger.

Escape had come as a surprise to him, and he still didn't understand how it happened, but his captivity hadn't been so long that he'd forgotten entirely the fact that he wanted to go home again. The other man seemed to have no home, or none he spoke of. At first, Danny had thought he was just being secretive, but even when they were free to go wherever they liked, he seemed to have no goal in mind, no family or loved ones to return to. Danny couldn't quite understand how long he'd been there. He knew it had to be years, at least, but how many years? One or two? A dozen? More?

He had to believe that his family would accept him. It wasn't so much faith as helplessness, because he couldn't bear anything else. Keeping himself moving toward had taken all his energy, although dragging the other half-ghost with him hadn't been a strain. If anything, it had given him a distraction, just like when they were together in that nightmare. Something to focus on other than his own pain or fear.

Everything had sped up once they arrived, the almost dreamlike state of their journey ending abruptly as he had to face his family and try to explain what he was and what had happened. In an odd way, the older man's interference had helped, by forcing his hand. He couldn't let them kill him, not after all they'd survived. It had always been easier for him to defend someone other than himself.

His parents still loved him and they wanted to help. They really did. But they had absolutely no idea of the depth of what had happened, and he couldn't just tell them. Even thinking about what had happened made him freeze up now, each detail too hard to look at too closely. Being alone with them made him anxious, even though he didn't think they wanted to hurt him. It was a strange relief when he realized the other half-ghost was there, even unseen.

That would be hard to explain too. It shouldn't feel safer to be alone with him, not really. That hadn't been true safety, the other man had no ability to protect him when the lights went on again. But it had been the closest to safety either could manage. Other people were a threat, a sign something horrible was going to happen. Even his parents. Even Jazz. How was he going to face Sam and Tucker again? How could he go back to school? Each little aspect of life seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. There was still the risk that the government would come after them again. Coming home probably was stupid, just like the other man said. He just couldn't think of anywhere else to go, and tried to justify it to himself.

The idea that the other man knew his parents was ridiculous. It couldn't be true. Danny didn't know what other explanation there was, other than maybe the man just lying, but it made no sense to him. The name Vlad was awful, anyway. He couldn't really make himself associate that name with the half ghost, and wasn't sure if it was because the name was weird or because he'd gotten used to not thinking of the man with any name attached.

He didn't want to sleep, either. He looked back at the tiny bits of memory he could stand, tried to convince himself that someday he'd feel normal again, closed his eyes and grew increasingly anxious that he'd open them and see that room again, this whole escape a dream. The other half-ghost, Vlad, was there, though, the sense of him at the edge of Danny's ghost sense comforting and familiar. If that guy could keep going despite all that had happened, could Danny really let himself give up now? And it wasn't just holding on for his own sake. It was for his family, his friends, even for Vlad. Fighting ghosts had been a lot easier than fighting his memory, but he had to keep fighting.

Finally sleep came to him, the intense stress beginning to wash away, replaced by an unbearable exhaustion that he'd ignored for too long.

* * *

 

Daniel had finally gone still. He snored a bit, which Vlad took as a sign that he was starting to relax.

Fully sleeping seemed too dangerous, so Vlad folded the sleeping bag in half and sat on it rather than lying down, only dozing for a few minutes at a time. This place wasn't quite the safe haven Daniel had wished for, even with the apparent acceptance by his parents of his ghost half. The boy seemed determined to ignore the danger of coming to a place their pursuers would know, and equally determined to stay here for the foreseeable future. If it became a critical problem, Vlad would act on Daniel's behalf despite him, but for now, it was easier to simply keep a watchful eye out while Daniel took the opportunity to recover some of his strength.

Despite the lightness of his sleep, Vlad found himself dreaming intermittently, most of his dreams forgotten as he snapped awake again. All that he recalled from them were emotional impressions, a sense of urgency and fear, which began to fade once he awoke. They made it much easier to try to resist sleeping. He could rest properly some time when Daniel was more alert, and when he was sure the younger half-ghost was fully aware of the danger to them both.

One of his short half-naps was interrupted by the bedroom door creaking open, light from the hallway spilling into the room as a narrow band that widened as the door opened further. Vlad sat up straight, alert, but it was Daniel's father checking on him again.

Jack didn't seem to notice Vlad at first, just looking at his sleeping son with an expression that was a strange mix of worry and relief. It took a moment for him to shift his gaze to the rest of the room, and see the faintly glowing shape near the wall opposite Daniel's bed. The hallway illuminated Jack's face and the look of awkward confusion that settled there.

"Uh... Vladdie?" Jack tilted his head a bit, as if trying to get a new perspective to see things more clearly. "So, this is where you went, huh?"

It was such an obvious statement that Vlad didn't bother responding, only giving Jack a faintly sour look for trying to start up a conversation again. He played with the idea of turning invisible to give Jack a hint, but decided against it. Jack knew he was there, and Vlad had no intention of actually leaving while Daniel was unconscious.

Jack kept staring at him, obviously searching for something else to say. His eyes drifted down, and he finally said, "Is that Danny's sleeping bag?"

"Yes." What an odd question. If Vlad could tell the whole family was peculiar, they must be very peculiar indeed, he thought. "He loaned it to me."

"That was nice of him." Jack peered over at Danny's sleeping form. "The couch downstairs folds into a bed, y'know."

"He told me."

"Okay." Jack seemed to be thinking through what to say next, although it wasn't clear to Vlad what was on his mind. "Danny said something about you guys being locked up together. That you helped him with some of the really bad stuff that went on."

"Yes." He still wasn't sure where the other man was going with this.

"Well... thanks." Jack glanced back at his son one last time before turning back to Vlad. "You don't have to be all sneaky around the house. Even if we weren't already friends, you helped Danny out."

The longer the conversation went on, the more uncomfortable it got. "Fine." It wasn't as if he'd been holding back out of a sense of unworthiness. Jack kept giving him that odd concerned, confused look, and didn't move. Irritated, Vlad said, "If you stand there with the door open, Daniel may wake up."

"Uh, right." At least Jack took the hint. "Well... see you later."

Vlad didn't bother responding, and after one more awkward pause Jack closed the door.

Once alone again, Vlad relaxed a bit more. Thus far, he felt more uncomfortable with Jack's excessive familiarity than with anything else. Even the peculiar sensation of looking at Maddie and not quite remembering was easier to push aside, now that he'd begun to grow used to seeing her. The fact that he hadn't really carried on a conversation with her probably helped.

He didn't know much about the accident that had changed Daniel. For whatever reason, the boy seemed reluctant to talk about it. After meeting Jack, it was easier to understand how a child could be caught in an accident involving ectoplasm. Vlad's own accident was still a blur of impressions, but he remembered the important things now. A flash of green, pain, and Jack. The details were unimportant. The only question remaining was how to explain to Daniel that his father was to blame for everything. Jack seemed friendly enough, well-meaning, but unaware of how he affected others. In a strange way, it was more of an affront than if Vlad had believed the accidents had been deliberately staged, the result of malice instead of stupidity and carelessness.

As he began to let his thoughts drift again, pushing his anger to the side for now, the question of Maddie rose again unbidden. The details of her face were burned into his memory, long after he'd forgotten who those features belonged to or why they were important. There were obvious explanations... he'd been intimate friends with her, or had been romantically connected, or had even hated her and had simply forgotten why. The problem was that all of these explanations seemed insufficient when matched with the immediate urgency of thought at his first sight of her, far more powerful than his memories of Jack or even of himself.

Pushing at the memory didn't shake anything new loose, only inspired another headache that he took as a sign that he wasn't yet ready to recall her in full. The rest of the night passed quietly, only interrupted by another visit from one of Daniel's parents, this time Maddie herself. He kept his head down, pretending to sleep, while Maddie walked over to Daniel's bedside and put a hand lightly on him through the blanket. He shifted a little in his sleep at the touch, but didn't wake up. Reassured that her son was still there, she left then, only sparing Vlad a momentary glance.

Sunrise was extremely pleasant. Day being eased into place, rather than rudely announced by the abrupt switching on of an overhead light, was another subtle aspect of life that he'd forgotten. It also helped break the association between light and pain in his mind. Sudden, bright light was danger. Darkness was safety. Gentle, gradual light was new, not quite safety but the chance of another day without pain. The ability to control his fate through more than mental tricks was still hard to accept on some level, but once his initial shock had faded, he'd refused to let go of that awareness of freedom. He could, would protect Daniel now. His helplessness before was a driving force, the memory one that mustn't be pushed aside. That urgent concern kept him moving. It gave him something to focus on, something to hope for.

Both of Daniel's parents checked on him when morning came, Maddie's face tense with concern and Jack's set with determination. Vlad wondered what he was determined to do. As Daniel kept sleeping, the two of them looked to Vlad, and Jack gestured for Vlad to come out into the hallway with them. After looking over at Daniel, he refused with a shake of his head. It wouldn't be right for Daniel to wake up without him. Jack seemed unsure how to respond, but Maddie took on the stubborn expression that Jack had held moments before, and gestured more emphatically. If they were this set on talking to Vlad, he supposed they might start trying to call him over next, and wake up Daniel. He stood reluctantly and walked over.

They shut the door behind him before either spoke.

"Are you really Vlad? Vlad Masters?" Maddie lacked the strange enthusiasm of her husband at the idea. In fact, if Vlad had been asked to interpret her expression, he'd have said it was nauseated.

Daniel had told Vlad that his ghost form was 'pretty weird,' and not very human-like, though not the strangest ghost he'd seen. Vlad had some idea of that, although his mental self image had grown a bit hazy over the years. Jack had been almost too casual about the whole thing, clumsily overcompensating for uncertainty with forced friendliness. Maddie had had little chance to react to Vlad before, absorbed by the immediate need to care for her son, but now that she looked at him face to face she seemed to have a more normal reaction of distaste. Or perhaps, Vlad thought charitably, she was just astonished to see someone she'd once known so changed.

"It is him!" Jack spoke up before Vlad could answer. "I saw his human face, it looks just like him!" He paused, then admitted, "Well, not just like him, but..."

"I'd like to see it, too." Maddie was still hesitant.

"Fine." Vlad glanced down the hallway, but there were no obvious places to rest. He decided, since he wouldn't need to hold it for long, to try leaning against the wall for support before forcing the change. It was a mistake. The black circles had barely passed over his body before the unexpected agony of trying to stand made his vision go blank. His human body could no longer support itself for any length of time, and the exhaustion he'd been able to ignore in the ghost form washed over him. Once he'd collapsed to the ground, his ruined leg muscles still burning from the strain, the ghost form reasserted itself and the pain faded to a background awareness, almost as if it was a problem for someone else entirely.

Jack and Maddie hadn't reacted quickly enough to catch him, but both were crouched next to him now, Maddie's face concerned and Jack's face nearly panicked. Blinking away the memory of pain, faintly dazed, Vlad pushed himself back up to a seated position.

"It really is you, isn't it?" Maddie didn't seem to know how to process that, her expression lost. "Vlad, you're..."

"You're gonna be okay," Jack said firmly. "We just gotta help your human body get better, right?"

A drastic over-simplification, and Vlad wasn't entirely sure that was even possible at this point. Instead of answering Jack, he stood up, and was vaguely annoyed that Jack put a hand on his arm as if to help him. "This body is fine."

Maddie was still staring at him, and Vlad expected a question like her daughter's, asking what had happened to them, but instead she said, "I don't see how a human can be a ghost at the same time."

"Neither did our captors." He glanced back toward Daniel's bedroom door, wondering when the boy would wake up.

"I didn't want to push Danny to explain things immediately. He seems to think the people who took you prisoner are going to come looking for you." Maddie seemed to have regained her balance, only slightly ill at ease looking at him. "Do you think so, too? What should we be preparing for? Do you know who was holding you?"

"There were several of them. They seemed to be well-organized. I believe their focus was only studying ghosts." He hadn't had any non-ghost 'roommates,' at least, until Daniel showed up. Vlad thought about what to add. "They wore white clothes. And some of them carried odd weapons, designed to hurt ghosts."

"As long as you guys stay in here, we can keep 'em out," Jack put in. It was a reckless promise, Vlad thought, but recklessness seemed to be a habit of Jack's.

"Maybe..." Maddie seemed less sure, her expression more calculating than Jack's. Vlad had expected the conversation to continue in that line, but instead she went on to ask, "Why were you sleeping in Danny's bedroom last night?"

At least she sounded more mystified than upset. He realized belatedly that Daniel's parents might be offended that their son chose what was, to them, practically a stranger over their own company. It made perfect sense to him. Daniel didn't have to worry about explaining what had happened to Vlad, or to worry about Vlad being able to understand. Maddie was obviously trying to be patient and not push Daniel faster than he was able to handle, but the need to explain was still there even unstated.

"To be sure he was safe." It came down to that, anyway.

"Have you thought about where you want to go from here?"

He took a moment to even make sense of the question. She simply didn't know better, assumed he was waiting to return to normal life. Perhaps after his human body recovered, if it could.

"No." Curiosity rose despite himself. If they did know him... "Do I have a family?"

They both seemed surprised by the question. Jack answered carefully, "Well, there was your dad, but that was back in college. We haven't really seen him since, uh, the funeral."

Jack had mentioned his supposed death before. If not literally true, it might as well have been. "How was my funeral?"

"Nice! Real nice." Jack seemed to be trying to reassure him. "Lots of flowers. Your dad talked some. There wasn't a body, though. They told us..."

"That you were cremated." Maddie wasn't quite so enthusiastic. "So your illness wouldn't spread. They wouldn't let us come visit you while you were in the hospital, either."

He remembered illness vaguely. A result of the accident? But Daniel had never mentioned being sick.

"Well, we can look up your dad, and see if he's still around." Jack frowned. "You still don't remember us, right?"

That was not entirely true. He had regained some details without context. An accident involving Jack. Maddie's red hair and purple eyes. In the absence of more concrete memories, he held onto those small details almost obsessively, turning them over again and again in his mind. They were the only fragments of himself that remained from before his imprisonment. "I don't remember much."

Maddie's expression was still tense. "We were all friends in college. Jack told you about that, right?"

"Yes. I don't remember it." Jack had tried to tell him a number of things, most of them either incomprehensible or best forgotten. It was less upsetting when Maddie tried to jog his memory. Maybe it would be easier to try to reclaim more of his past with her help. He wasn't sure it would be a good idea to try. As they both began to tell him things about the past, he listened patiently while not listening, wondering if either of them would notice. They didn't seem to.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Violence warning

 

            Daniel came out of his room while his parents were trying to offer Vlad an unhelpful series of distant memories that he didn’t recall.  The main information he took from them was that he’d been there a very long time, probably since before Daniel had been born.  It was hard to have a clear grasp of the passage of time when the only measurements you’d allow yourself were ‘before’ and ‘now.’

 

            “Hi.”  Daniel looked a bit shaky, despite remaining in the ghost form.  “I mean, good morning.”

 

            “Danny!”  His mother’s attention was immediately drawn away from Vlad, and she reached out as if to steady him.  “Maybe you should go back to bed, sweetie.  One of us can stay with you...”

 

            Vlad wondered idly if he was now ‘one of us.’

 

            Danny shook his head, but gave her a faint smile.  “I’m okay.  I don’t feel like sleeping anymore right now.”

 

            “You hungry?” Jack asked, with a restrained version of the forceful cheer he’d shown Vlad.  “Think you can keep some breakfast down?”

 

            “Sure.”  Danny still seemed subdued, as if part of himself was muted.  He glanced up and down the hallway with a caution Vlad approved of before starting toward the stairs. 

 

            Daniel’s parents arranged breakfast, while Vlad and Daniel sat at the table and watched.  He wasn’t sure what Daniel was watching for; Vlad was keeping an eye out for suspicious, possibly glowing, foodstuffs.  Fortunately, Maddie seemed to be taking the lead in preparing breakfast.  They both got warm tea and oatmeal with cinnamon and sugar.  Jack had asked Vlad what he wanted to eat, then after a brief and awkward staring contest, apparently decided Vlad just wanted what Danny was getting.  It wasn’t terrible, although the cinnamon taste was a bit sharp.

 

            His sister came down while they were eating, and gave Daniel a worried, fond look and Vlad a suspicious one.  He wondered what he’d done to deserve that.  She helped herself to a colorful bowl of cereal before sitting with them at the table.

 

            “Morning, Jazz.”  Daniel’s greeting was still a bit restrained, but she smiled warmly back at him.

 

            “How did you sleep?”  She asked it casually, as if it weren’t a rather serious question.  Vlad couldn’t tell whether that was cluelessness or deliberate, feigned lightness of tone.

 

            “Okay.”  Daniel gave her the same awkward near-smile he’d offered his mother.  She looked dubious for a moment, but the look was replaced by another carefully encouraging smile.

 

            “What were you planning on doing today?”

 

            The simple question clearly flummoxed him.  Daniel stared at her for a moment, then looked down at his bowl again.  “I don’t know.”  After another second’s pause, he added, “Maybe call Sam and Tuck.  Let them know I’m not dead.  Mostly not dead.”  He smiled unpleasantly for a moment.

 

            “We might not want to get into contact with anyone about this just yet.”  Maddie spoke up, saving Vlad the trouble.  She gave Daniel a rather sad, serious look.  “If they are trying to keep track of you, or of places you’d go, this is the first place they’d look.  They might not know who your friends are, though.   We don’t want to give them more ideas of where to look for you.”  She didn’t go on to point out that Daniel’s friends might make good hostages if the government’s agents couldn’t reclaim the half-ghosts with force, but Vlad doubted she hadn’t thought of it.

 

            “Oh.”  Daniel didn’t argue.  He didn’t seem to react at all.

 

            “But that doesn’t mean we can’t let them know you’re okay!”  Jasmine cut in, almost too emphatically.  She leaned slightly over the table toward Daniel, as if she were moments away from trying to literally pick him up to lift his mood.  “If we call them, that’d be easy to trace, but I could give them a message in person.  Even if there’s somebody... even if they know you’re here and they’re paying attention, they can’t follow every person I talk to at school just in case, right?”

 

            Daniel’s expression eased a bit from its painful blankness at that.  “Okay.  Maybe I can write them a letter or something, too.”  He stared ahead absently, not quite frowning, as if a bit dazed.  “Y’know, I thought as soon as I got back, that’d be the first thing I’d want to do.  But I didn’t even think about it until this morning.”

 

            “You had enough to think about.”  Maddie sounded faintly consoling, although there was an almost indiscernible change in her tone as she asked,  “Danny... did your friends know about this?  About the ghost part of you?” 

 

            “Yeah.  I asked them to keep it a secret.  I was worried...”  He shook his head, as if rejecting whatever he’d been about to say.  “That people would be freaked out by it.”

 

            “Danny, I wish you’d told us.  We’re experts on ghosts, after all.  We could have helped you.”  She smiled at him as she said it, perhaps trying to ease the impact of her words.

 

            They seemed to hit hard anyway, from the way Daniel flinched.  “Yeah, it was pretty stupid of me.”

 

           “Hey, it’s not that stupid.”  His father clapped a hand on his shoulder, and Daniel looked up at him.  “I mean, when you think about the stupid stuff _I’ve_ done, it’s pretty hard to explain how much common sense you have!  Must have got that from your mom.”

 

            “I guess so.”  It didn’t strike Vlad as particularly comforting, but Daniel’s smile up at him was somehow less distant than his earlier efforts.  Maybe it was just familiar, or maybe the lack of delicacy was easier to deal with. “I think I’m going to go back to my room and try... writing that letter. ”

 

            “All right.”  Maddie smiled at him.  “We’ll come in and check on you a little, okay?”

 

            “Sure.  Okay.”  Daniel stood up.  Vlad did as well, and wondered why everyone in the room but Daniel gave him an odd look.  “Thanks for breakfast.”

 

            When they got back to Daniel’s room, he sat down at his desk, ghostly tail curled up underneath him.  Vlad wondered if it looked odd to his family, who hadn’t had time to grow used to the sight of the boy without legs.

 

            “You know, if you keep just quietly following me everywhere, they’re going to think there’s something really wrong with you,” Daniel said, not too heatedly.

 

            “I suppose there is.  Does it make you uncomfortable?”

 

            “No.  Not really.  There’s some stuff really wrong with me, too.”  He sighed, and looked down at his desk.  “I don’t know what to write.  What I should tell them.”

 

            “Keep it simple,” Vlad advised.  “That you’re alive, but unable to resume your life still.  They wouldn’t understand more.  It would only disturb them.”

 

            “Guess so.”  He kept giving his desk that glum look.  “It’d be easier if I could just talk to them.”

 

            “Your mother was right.  Contacting them would be dangerous, for you and for them.”

 

            He didn’t respond at first, as if he hadn’t heard.  “It’s too weird that you know my parents.  That’s just too much of a coincidence to believe.”

 

            “It isn’t a coincidence at all,” Vlad explained patiently.  “You said you got your powers in a lab accident, isn’t that right?”

 

            “Yeah.”  Daniel raised his head a bit.

 

            “I believe I did as well.  The details are still a bit unclear, but... If your father has made a habit of experimenting with ectoplasm over the years, isn’t it plausible that his experiments might have affected two different people close to him?”

 

            “Huh.”  Daniel looked a bit surprised.  “It’s not like my dad works alone, though.  He and Mom work together on everything.  And neither of them were in the room when I got my powers.  I mean, I was in their lab, but I pretty much did it to myself.”

 

            “Nonetheless, you are a teenager,” Vlad pointed out.  “You shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near such dangerous things in the first place.”

 

            Daniel frowned sourly.  “I’m fourteen, not five.”

 

            “And when you were five, was he careful to keep his experiments away from you, from his family?” Vlad pressed.

 

            Instead of answering, Daniel responded with an irritated question of his own.  “Why are you so down on my dad all of a sudden?  Even if I thought the accident was his fault—and I don’t—it’d be my mom’s fault too.”

 

            “Because he’s responsible.”  It seemed so self-evident that he shouldn’t need to explain more.

 

            “ _What_?”  Daniel stared at him with obvious confusion, before shaking his head sharply.  “Fine.  Whatever.  I’m not arguing with you about this anymore.”

 

            “My thoughts exactly.”  It was better to drop the subject for now, he decided.  Daniel’s need to defend his father was understandable.  Given some time to think about it, he might see things more clearly.  “Perhaps you should start writing that letter.”

 

* * *

 

 

            They came at night.  Neither Vlad nor Daniel were asleep, although Daniel had been trying.  The first hint of the attack was the sound of an alarm, and of glass shattering.  Daniel seemed to come alert nearly as quickly as Vlad, although neither had time to do anything but stand before the door opened to reveal Maddie.

 

            “Danny, you and Vlad go upstairs with Jazz.  Your dad and I will take care of them down here.”  Her expression was tense, and she was still wearing her peculiar blue jumpsuit, pulling its hood into place over her head as she spoke.

 

            Daniel looked as if he was thinking about arguing, so Vlad took him firmly by the hand and lead him out of the room before he had the chance to speak.  Maddie gave him a look that was hard to decipher through the hood, but he fancied that it was gratitude.

 

            Out in the hallway, Jasmine was wearing a set of lavender pajamas, her serious expression a junior version of her mother’s.  “This way.”

 

            They hurried down the hall to a set of stairs that seemed as if they should lead to the roof, but instead led to a peculiar metal trap door.  Jasmine turned a thick metal latch on the door, then pushed it open, and stepped up into an equally strange metal room.  Daniel followed her, and Vlad came up last, glancing back once.  He could hear shouting downstairs, but couldn’t make out the words.  When Jasmine screwed the door shut again behind them, all sound from the house was muted, even the alarm.  She seemed to almost collapse against one of the metal walls after that, her legs tucked up in front of her and her head lowered.  He hadn’t gotten the impression that it had required that much strength to close the door...

 

            They were in the metal structure that he’d noticed atop the building.  Now, the purpose of that structure was more obvious, banks of computer consoles and odd monitors giving it the feel of some sort of control center.  It also reminded him uncomfortably of another room that had become quite familiar.

 

            “This isn’t... this is wrong.”  Daniel was pacing back and forth in his anxiety.  “We can’t just hide up here while...”

 

            “Danny, you going back down there will give them exactly what they want.”  Jasmine didn’t quite snap the words out, but her tone quieted Daniel down.  “They’re ghost hunters, right?  That means both of you are the last people who should try to chase them off.  At least they probably won’t be expecting Mom and Dad to give them a fight.”

 

            Perhaps he’d underestimated her before.  At least she was trying to talk sense to her younger brother.  “Is there something useful we could do from here?”

 

            She seemed a little surprised at the question, but shook her head.  “I think most of what’s up here is supposed to defend against things outside the house.  I don’t really know how most of it works.”

 

            “Why did your parents build this?”  He looked around at the room again, no more comfortable with it.

 

            She pulled her knees up closer to her chest and buried her head against them before answering in a mumble, “Because they’re crazy.”

 

            Time passed in painful silence.  He imagined Jasmine and Daniel were preoccupied with images of the fight below, worry for their parents’ safety.  He was occupied with an increasingly urgent feeling of being trapped, that he wouldn’t be able to leave the room again even though he’d come in willingly.  He was perfectly aware that it was irrational, just a memory of something that was behind him, but...

 

            Daniel stood up again, giving the door a strange look.  “We won’t know if they’re okay until either they come let us out, or...”

 

            The look seemed to be warning of some incipient plan to leave this room’s dubious safety.  Vlad put in, “They’ll only be in greater danger if you leave, you know.  They’d become distracted with the effort to protect you.”

 

            “But they’re just normal people!”  Jasmine gave him an odd look for that outburst, but Daniel went on, “We’re the ones that the government’s after, and we’ve got these powers!  We can’t just wait to see if they’ll be okay, we should—“

 

            “You’re not going down there.”  Vlad stood up, and was aware that he was taking advantage of the excuse to leave the room, but Daniel going down alone wasn’t an option either way.  “I’ll go see.”

 

            “Neither of you should go!”  Jasmine looked back and forth between them, as if trying to decide who was the least rational.  “What if they catch you again?”

 

            It was a low blow that he suspected was intentional, knocking back Daniel’s fantasies of heroics with a visceral fear.  The boy looked stunned for a moment, perhaps with the thought of recapture, or perhaps with the realization that fear would be enough to stop him.

 

            Vlad took advantage of that pause, rather than let Jasmine’s warning freeze him as well.  “I’ll be right back, then.”

 

            “Wait a minute!”  Jasmine’s argument was cut off as Vlad didn’t bother with the stairs or door this time, simply phasing down through the floor.  It was only when he’d completely left the room that a strange ache in his chest faded.

 

            The house was dark, but not so dark he couldn’t see.  The alarm had ended and the sounds downstairs gone mostly mute, although he heard one loud crunching impact that seemed more ominous for its lack of context.  As he was deciding whether or not to go downstairs, a white-clad figure appeared at the top of the staircase.

 

            The darkness would only emphasize his unnatural glow, so Vlad faded to invisibility, and watched the man with an odd detachment.  He was holding a weapon with a familiar shape, like a gun with an oversized barrel, and glanced up and down the hallway once before stepping up into it.  Vlad had been playing with various ideas of what to do about him when the man’s attention was suddenly focused directly at him, despite his invisibility.

 

            “They’re up here!”  He aimed and fired, a flash of light in the dark hall.

 

            Surprised the man missed at such a close range, Vlad rushed forward.  His speed seemed unnatural to him, enhanced, and he gripped both the man’s hands, forcing the gun hand up before the man could fire again.  It was only when Vlad released the invisibility, seeing no reason to maintain it, that he realized the man’s first shot hadn’t missed after all.  There was a wound on his chest bleeding green, although it seemed to be closing already.  It didn’t particularly hurt.

 

            The man was struggling, but he couldn’t pull his hands free of Vlad’s grasp.  He couldn’t even pull Vlad’s arms down from where Vlad held them.  Distantly amused at the disparity in their strength, Vlad tried squeezing down on the hand that was still holding the weapon.

 

            He could feel small bones snapping, and there was a momentary startled pause before the man began screaming.  His knees seemed to collapse, and he was suspended only by Vlad’s grip on him.  As Vlad let go, the man fell to the ground, his gloved right hand misshapen.  Red stained the white of his coat’s sleeve.  Curious, he braced a foot against the man’s chest, pulling the man’s left hand up from where it had been clutching at the right.  He kept pulling.  The man’s screams went higher, and he thrashed for a moment, before going completely limp.  His arm made a strange wet sucking noise as it was pulled loose of his shoulder, and soon the spilled blood made the white suit seem black.  Vlad dropped the arm, which fell next to the man, only connected to the body by the coat’s sleeve now.  He leaned down to give the head one sharp twist, snapping the neck.  It had ended rather quickly, and he felt a bit disappointed by that. 

 

            As he turned his attention away from the now-dead agent, a familiar tingle at the back of his consciousness meant Daniel had come down as well.  Turning to look, he was alarmed to see that Daniel’s eyes and mouth were both rather wide, as if he were in a state of shock.

 

            “You... didn’t...”  Daniel seemed to struggle to get the words out, but once they came, they were nearly a shout.  “You didn’t need to do that!” 

 

            Utterly bewildered by his reaction, Vlad pointed out sensibly, “He’d have done worse to you, if he’d had the chance.  In fact, they did do worse to us.”

 

            “Yeah, but, but...” He was still staring, his gaze switching from the body on the floor to Vlad and back again, as if not sure which horrified him more.  “You just tore his _arm_ off!  Why would you do that?!”

 

            “It was a test.”  Vlad looked down at the body, then glanced over to the staircase.  “I don’t hear anything downstairs.  Shall we look?”

 

            “Why are you so relaxed?  What’s wrong with you?!”  Daniel wasn’t calming down.  If anything, he seemed to be getting more upset, gesturing at the body.  “You can’t just, you can’t do things like that!”

 

            Answering that he obviously _could_ seemed a bit too casual.  “Fine.  I’ll take care of it more quickly next time.”  There was no question in his mind that there would be a next time.  They’d hardly give up after one raid.  “If you’re not coming with me, you should go back upstairs with your sister.”

 

            He seemed to need another moment to calm himself down enough to answer, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths.  Since he’d seen plenty of things just as horrible or worse during their captivity, Vlad couldn’t quite understand why he was so upset by _this_.  Perhaps it was the danger of recapture, or the threat to his family. “I’m coming with you!  You’re...”  Daniel’s voice was finally starting to come down a bit from its high, panicked tone.   “You look like you’re hurt, too.”

 

            “A bit.  It isn’t really painful.”  He looked down at himself again, and touched the injured spot gingerly.  “I believe it’s already healing.”  Could the repeated cycle of injury and recovery have improved his own durability, or was the ghost form simply that resilient?  Surely those weapons were designed especially for hurting ghosts.

 

            A set of rapid footsteps on the stairs caught both their attention, but instead of another agent, Daniel’s mother turned the corner into the upstairs hallway.  For a moment, she was tense, as if bracing herself for a fight, but then she took in the scene and relaxed faintly.  In one hand, she carried a rather large gun that resembled the weapons wielded by the government’s men.  “Danny, what are you doing down here?  You need to go back upstairs!”

 

            “Are any of them left?” Vlad asked.

 

            “No.”  Even with her face half-concealed, he could see her jaw tighten for a moment.  “But Danny needs to go upstairs for a little while longer.”

 

            “I’m not going anywhere.”  Daniel’s shocked expression was replaced by childish determination.  “I want to know what happened.  Is Dad okay?”

 

            “Yes, he’s okay.”  Her attention seemed to drift momentarily to the body on the floor, but unlike Daniel, she didn’t panic at the sight of it.  “Honey, just wait upstairs with Jazz.  Please.”

 

            Daniel seemed to wrestle between choices, before finally capitulating.  “Fine.  I’ll go.  They’re really all gone?”

 

           “Yes.”  She relaxed visibly, as he agreed to leave.  “We’ll come get you when we’re sure it’s absolutely safe, okay?”

 

            There was lingering doubt on his face, but he floated back a few feet, and finally straight up through the ceiling.  Maddie slumped against the wall for a moment, her free hand rubbing her face as if trying to ward off a headache, then she looked up and at Vlad again.  “Did you bring him down here with you?”  It was no casual question, something fierce underneath it.

 

            “Of course not.”  He tried not to take offense.  “I was hoping, if _one_ of us went down, he would resist his own urge to come help.”  Among other reasons.

 

            “All right.”  The anger faded from her voice, and she stared at the body on the floor for another moment.  “We have to clean up before we can let the kids down here again.  There’s more of them downstairs.”  She sounded tired, or perhaps a bit numb.  “Come on.  You help.”

 

            The living room was a mess, broken glass from a now-shattered picture window reflecting little hints of light across the carpet.  There was a large chair overturned, and a few scorch marks on the walls where shots had missed.  On the floor, there were three more bodies, all dressed in white (and red) and all still.  At the other end of the room, Jack Fenton was sitting on his couch, leaning slightly forward, hands folded between his knees, looking over the room with a strange, distant expression.

 

            “Oh.  Hi, Vladdie.”  He didn’t look particularly surprised to see they’d been joined by Vlad, and looked down at the bodies on the floor again, his voice almost contemplative.  “Y’know, you spend your whole life thinking about how you can save people from ghosts.  And then it turns out you gotta save ghosts from people.  Life’s real weird, sometimes.”

 

            Maddie walked over to him, putting a hand on his shoulder, and he smiled faintly up at her.

 

            “We have to get rid of them.  We can’t call the police over this, and we shouldn’t let the kids see.  We’ll...” Maddie looked around the room and sighed.  “Let’s take them downstairs.  We can send them through the portal.”

 

            “Guess that’s where dead folks go, anyway.”  Jack stood up.   “Vlad, you okay?”

 

            “What?  Ah.  Yes.”  He’d already forgotten about the minor wound he’d been dealt. 

 

            “Okay.  Good.”  Jack lacked either the fierceness of his wife, or the fear of his son, looking down at the bodies.  Vlad couldn’t quite determine what his empty expression meant.  “Let’s get started.”

 

            It didn’t take long to move the bodies themselves.  Neither of them asked Vlad about why the body upstairs was in two parts, although the downstairs bodies were a bit neater, mostly shot through the head or chest.  One had a heavy bruise on the side of his face, but there was no hint as to where he’d gotten it. 

 

            His first sighting of the ghost portal was a new shock of memory, although Maddie and Jack were both too wrapped up in what they were doing to really notice.  A swirling green.  A flash of green light, pain, and then... Yes.  This was how it happened.  He simply dropped the body he was carrying at the bottom of the basement staircase and then went up again, never coming closer to the portal.  Still wrapped up in his own thoughts, he took Jack’s former place on the couch.

 

           It hadn’t been a household lab.  It was at school.  He was a college student.  They were building something... he was excited and nervous.    Maddie had been there, too, helping with the experiment.  He didn’t really think it would work.  Jack turned it on too quickly, was never careful enough.  He shouldn’t have been standing in front of it so closely, it—it felt like an explosion, but the portal was still there at the end of it.  And he was sick, it had infected him.  The memory faded away almost immediately after the accident and the first sensation of weakness and pain.  Remembering that part too keenly might be worse than not remembering at all. It was more than a simple feeling of familiarity, or a few flashes of recollection, it was a concrete _memory_.  He felt reassured by the certainty of it.

 

            When Maddie and Jack came upstairs again, he looked at them with different eyes.  They were transformed from their youth; nonetheless, it was them.  He was sure he’d been fond of Maddie, but how that had translated into the intense sense of importance behind recognizing her features was less clear.  Jack looked older now, or maybe that was the gravity of the situation pulling him from his usual foolishness. 

 

            Maddie stood in the middle of the living room, and said calmly, “The carpet’s ruined.”  Then, she made a strange noise, like air was leaking out of her.  Jack quickly wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned against him and cried.  Standing to the side, Vlad watched with the emotional distance of a scientist observing another species.

 


	8. Interlude

 

            My name is Vlad Masters, and I am human.

 

            It should be obvious, but the longer I stay here, the harder it is to remember, to believe it.  The things this grotesque body can endure are unimaginable, and with each passing day it becomes more difficult to recall myself.  I must not let them take this from me.  It does not matter what they say, it does not matter what I look like.  I am human.  My name is Vlad Masters.

 

* * *

 

            They are not coming.  No one is.  At first, I pictured it so clearly.  They would realize something was wrong.  By some miracle, they would understand what had happened and arrive. Maddie was the center of these nonsensical fantasies.  I have realized how ridiculous they are.  Maddie’s dream is to hunt ghosts.  If she ever comes here, it will not be to help me, it will be as one of those observing from outside.  Abandoning that fantasy is more agonizing than any test.  I had wanted so much to believe that someone would rescue me.

 

* * *

 

             They shave their heads.  Will they make her shave hers?  Would I recognize her, like that?  What a horrible thing to do, her red hair was, is beautiful, I can see it so clearly.  Even if she has lost her hair, I will recognize her by her eyes.  They are purple, quite unusual.  I wonder if she would help if I called out to her, told her who I truly was?  Surely she will remember me.  Surely she will help.  After all, I am human.

 

* * *

 

             Jack did this.  He ought to come take responsibility for what he’s done.

 

* * *

 

             Finally, some company.  They have placed a woman, or rather a female ghost, in a containment unit next to mine.  I had been reduced to pacing back and forth, speaking to myself in the dark.  She has purple eyes and I will know her and she will help me.

 

            The ghost does not, of course.  She has blue eyes, and blue skin, and blue hair, all in different shades.  She is an unpleasant woman, who at first did not believe my claims of humanity, then grew even frostier at the revelation of the human body.  Since our captors are human, it’s understandable.  I am trying to draw her into conversation regardless.  Even her angry words are wonderful to hear.

 

* * *

 

            She loves painting.

 

            When we speak of the subject, her terse, unfriendly tone vanishes.  Suddenly she is so close to alive, her words as vibrant as the colors she’d once applied to canvas.  She shares with me stories of her greatest works, tells me that she’d mastered her chosen vocation to such a point that her pictures no longer merely seemed real, but were real.  Still life, animals, people, even whole landscapes.  She created them with her brush, casting them over the dull palette of reality.  That is doubtlessly what she was doing when they captured her, but when she speaks of it, it is with breathless enthusiasm, no regrets at all. 

 

            I find myself drawn in by her passion despite myself.  She is disgusted by the plainness of our prison, and has decided how she would redecorate.  The far wall is to become an underwater scene, whales swimming with their ancient serenity in imaginary cerulean seas.  It sounds lovely. 

 

* * *

 

             He plays the violin.  In fact, I suspect that playing the violin was all he did in his ghostly existence.  The subject is narrow, too narrow, and being deprived of his instrument seems to be driving him insane with unusual speed.  I wonder what he was doing when they caught him.  Sharing his music with humanity?

 

* * *

 

             He is obsessed with the color green.  At first I was concerned that this was another ghost whose interests were too limited for discussion, but now I realize that there are such a remarkable number of things that are green that we can talk for hours on the topic.  Even in this room, there are a few lit green buttons, which he seems to have resignedly accepted as enough to function.  Since my blue skin has a very faint greenish tinge, closer to teal, he has dubbed me an acceptable comrade.  He did tell me that my eyes were hideous.  Rather rudely, in fact.

 

            I suppose his eventual fate, dissolving into a puddle of green when he no longer has the strength to maintain his form, is exactly what he’d want.

 

* * *

 

             She loves games, and was captured while innocently running a few humans through her harmless diversions.

 

* * *

 

             He told me that ghosts tend to have singular obsessions, which I had long since concluded for myself.  He also informed me that I was a ‘human ghost,’ fixated on my own lingering humanity.  He is a ghost psychologist of sorts.  His breadth of conversational topics is refreshing.

 

* * *

 

             She has purple eyes, and had beautiful red hair, but I am not sure who she is or why that matters.  It’s simply a litany, something to repeat and concentrate on when I must think of something other than reality.  She has purple eyes, and had beautiful red hair. 

 

            I am human.  The meaning of that is easier to recall.  I can feel that other self lingering at the back of my awareness, waiting for its time to come forth again.  It has grown weak, but I cannot allow it to die.  It is the most precious thing I have.  It is the only thing I have.

 

* * *

 

             He is a fisherman.  There are so many varieties of fish, and a singular preferred method for catching each.

 

* * *

 

             She hates me, refuses to speak more than a few words with me, and I have absolutely no idea why.

 

* * *

 

            He designs women’s clothing.  Quite poorly, judging from his lurid descriptions.  Or perhaps that’s how women dress now.  I wouldn’t really know.

 

* * *

 

            He believes himself to be a superhero.  The stories of his exploits are colorful and varied, although he’s begun repeating himself and I’m not sure he realizes it.  That is not the most important thing about him.  He is also human.  And I am a human ghost, after all.  I shall endeavor to help him, to keep him lingering in this place as long as possible.  I am not entirely sure it is a favor.


	9. Chapter 9

 

                The bodies were removed from this world entirely, but the damage left behind would take longer to repair.  They eventually just moved rugs over the bloodstains on the floor, and then Maddie went up to retrieve her children.

 

                Jasmine was quiet, and paler than usual, but didn’t ask any intrusive questions and didn’t shoot Vlad any more dirty looks.  Daniel, on the other hand, seemed on edge, as if ready for the fight to continue even though he hadn’t taken part in it.  None of them seemed ready to sleep, so they all gathered in the kitchen and Maddie made hot chocolate, a homey touch that seemed a bit surreal after what had happened.

 

                “Is it okay if I go back to my room for the rest of the night?”  Daniel raised the suggestion hesitantly.  “I mean... they’re probably not going to come back right away.  Right?”

 

                “I don’t know.”  Maddie shook her head.  “It doesn’t feel safe.”

 

                “I would be there,” Vlad pointed out, and the look he got now was closer to exasperated than wary or upset.  “And it would be as safe as any other part of the house, I imagine.”

 

                “That isn’t necessary.  I’ll stay with Danny,” Maddie decided.  Daniel seemed a little surprised, but nodded.  “You and Jack can help clean up the house some more.”

 

                “You got it.”  Jack’s cheer seemed a little forced, but he stood up.  “Let’s go take care of that window.  Jazz, do you wanna help, or go with your mom?”

 

                “I’ll help.”  She was still obviously shaken.  Vlad supposed activity would distract her from the lingering trauma of the attack.

 

                Maddie and Daniel disappeared upstairs, while Jack led the efforts to take care of the rest of the house.  Picking up the glass was slow, but not difficult, particularly given the heavy-duty gloves that the family had on hand for their odd suits.  Jasmine left to change into jeans and a t-shirt.  None of them had properly slept, but he suspected even Daniel and Maddie’s nerves were too high to rest.  By the time dawn came, the glass was mostly gone.  Jack and Jasmine both avoided the rugs on the floor, so Vlad picked up the glass there, less squeamish about what was underneath.  Something about the monotony of the work was pleasant, but as always he felt faintly ill at ease without knowing how Daniel was.

 

               Instead of breakfast, Jack had coffee and Jasmine brewed some tea.  Neither of them seemed to have an appetite, and Vlad didn’t request anything, although Jasmine shared her tea without being asked.  As the day went on, and Daniel and Maddie remained upstairs, Jack finally went up to check on them and Jasmine went to her own bedroom, the paleness in her face beginning to fade.  Vlad was left alone downstairs.  He wondered if he should be pleased at the implied trust of leaving him alone, or upset at being abandoned, but he felt neither.

 

                There was still the option to go upstairs invisibly again, but something about Maddie’s last words held him back for the moment.  After more time around her, it was easier to accept that she wouldn’t harm Daniel, and wouldn’t willingly allow him to come to harm.  Her husband was another question.  The two accidents, and his erratic experiments, meant he could harm Daniel without any intention to do so.  That problem still nagged at him, a danger despite Jack’s obvious lack of malice.

 

                It was well past noon before he saw any of the family again, Jasmine coming back downstairs and still looking a bit exhausted.  Jack, Maddie and Daniel appeared close to dinner, and Jasmine helped Maddie prepare soup for the family.  Like breakfast, no one seemed particularly hungry, but at least it would help replenish their energy a bit.  After, Jack did the dishes, only breaking one, while Maddie and Daniel went back upstairs and Jasmine did homework on the living room’s coffee table.  Jack tried to engage Vlad in conversation despite his terse responses.  At least he wasn’t still speaking of the past, instead apparently just saying whatever came to mind, practically carrying on a conversation all by himself.  It made it easier to ignore.

 

                Night fell, the house mostly recovered from the attack.  Jack was obviously more on edge once it was dark out, but Vlad doubted the government’s agents would attack again so soon.  The family had proved more difficult to deal with than they could have possibly expected, and they would need to plan their next attempt with greater care.  Maddie came downstairs alone, only to ask Jack up with her.  Vlad realized he had spent most of the day apart from Daniel, increasingly uncomfortable with it, despite his certainty that Maddie would inform them had anything happened to the boy.  He wasn’t even sure what he was so afraid of, just a free-floating anxiety, as if Daniel might vanish should Vlad not be there to keep an eye on him.  Jasmine, at her parent’s suggestion, brought down a blanket and pillow for the couch’s fold-out bed, no one asking this time if Vlad wanted to sleep there.  He didn’t want to sleep at all, in fact, but didn’t argue.

 

                He sensed Daniel’s approach that night before seeing the boy at the top of the stairs.  Daniel still wasn’t in human form, though he walked down the staircase rather than simply float down.  He didn’t speak at first, just sitting at the edge of the bed across from Vlad. 

 

                “Unable to sleep?”

 

                “I slept some today.”  Daniel’s head was slightly bowed, as if under some weight.  “I’m not tired anymore.  Mom and Dad fell asleep upstairs, so...”

 

                “It’s good to see you.  It felt very strange for you to be away so long.”

 

                “Yeah.  For me too.”  Daniel finally looked up at him.  “You scared me last night.  Don’t do things like that again.  Okay?”

 

                Vlad frowned.  “I can’t promise that.  If something threatens us, I’ll destroy it.  And there’s no reason to show those people any kindness.”

 

                “I know there’s not.  But don’t do it anyway.  Just...”  Daniel seemed to struggle to find the right words.  “Just kill them, I guess, if you think you have to.  But don’t hurt people just for the sake of doing it.”

 

                “I didn’t.  I wanted to compare a human’s durability to my own strength in this form.  I think they were quite right to be afraid of us, though our imprisonment was unforgivable.” 

 

                “Now you know, so don’t do it again,” Daniel pressed.

 

                “Fine.  If there’s no reason, I won’t.”  It would hardly be the first time he’d agreed with Daniel to calm the boy, despite being unconvinced of his arguments.

 

                “Okay.”  Daniel didn’t quite relax, but some of the weight on him seemed lifted.  “I guess you were right that they’d find us here.”

 

                “Of course they would.  This would be the first place they’d look.  I suppose _you_ were right that your parents are better equipped to defend you than I’d expected.”  Except, perhaps, from themselves.

 

                “Yeah.  Maybe.”  Daniel looked at the boarded-up window.  “Do you think you’ll be okay down here?”

 

                “Yes.  The next attack won’t happen tonight.  Perhaps tomorrow night.  I do feel much better seeing that you’re well.”

 

                “Sorta.  I hope they don’t wake up and get worried that I’m gone.”  He pulled his knees up to his chin, wrapping his arms around them.  “Is this... are they just going to keep coming?  Are we going to have to fight them off again and again?”

 

                “Probably.  If we prove too much trouble to bother with, they may eventually give up, but I doubt it,” Vlad answered bluntly.  “Do you regret coming here now?”

 

                Daniel was quiet for several moments.  “I dunno.  I’m worried about everybody.  Especially Jazz.  She was always the one with common sense who didn’t believe in the ghost stuff, and now everything’s all weird, and we’re all in danger, and the stuff she used to think was true maybe isn’t.  I think she’s pretty freaked out.  And she’s never really done the training like Mom and Dad, or the ghost fighting like me.”

 

                “Did you truly fight ghosts, the way you described?”  He’d been growing in suspicion that Daniel’s delusions had had some element of truth, the more he observed Daniel outside of their imprisonment.  The boy certainly seemed to believe it was his job to protect people, even those who obviously didn’t deserve it.

 

                “I told you I did.  I wasn’t lying.”  Daniel shot him an annoyed look.  “Why’s that so hard to believe?”

 

                “Then I hope you’ve rethought it, after all this.  If you did even half of those things you described, it was incredibly foolish.  You had a terrible accident and gained these powers as a side-effect.  The fate of humanity is hardly your responsibility because of that.”

 

                “It wasn’t all terrible.”  His answer was softer, his gaze distant.  “Until I got caught.”

 

                “Of course it wasn’t terrible before you faced the consequences of putting yourself in danger.  Just as your father’s experiments seemed harmless to you until you were genuinely hurt by one,” Vlad pointed out, in what he thought was a sensible tone of voice.

 

                “Why do you keep talking bad about my dad?  He just risked his neck to try to protect us!  It’s not his fault I went and turned the thing on.”  Daniel was clearly upset again.  “It’s like you’re fixated on blaming him for it.  Why don’t you blame my mom too?  Or me, since I’m the guy who _did_ it?”

 

                “You’re a child.  You should have had no access to his experiments at all, much less being constantly exposed to them.  Your mother might bear some blame, though she seems less careless than your father.  He’s a danger to you, Daniel.  A proven danger, in fact.  What if you had not gained ghost powers?  What if you had been killed?  What if your _sister_ had been the one harmed?  Would you still be so eager to forgive him?”  Vlad pressed.  “The fact that he didn’t _mean_ to cause you harm only makes him more dangerous.  At least cruelty or ill will can be expected and planned for.”

 

                “Stop it!  Stop talking about him like that!”  Agitated, Daniel’s voice rose, and he glanced upstairs as if worried he’d woken his family.  “Don’t you realize how _nice_ he’s been to you?  He’s been trying his best to help you!  Him and my mom are letting you lurk around acting like a big scary creep, and just because I vouched for you and they used to know you and they feel bad for you.  They could’ve blasted you, or chased you out, but they took you in and they just _killed_ some guys to help you stay safe, too, not just me!  What do you want from him?!”

 

               It was a difficult question to answer, one he thought about carefully before answering.  “I suppose I want him gone, so long as he’s a threat.”  

 

                “He’s not a... he’s...”  Daniel took a long, deep breath.  He no longer looked angry.  He looked afraid.  “Stay away from my dad, I mean it!  Don’t you do anything to him, even if you think he’s the worst guy on the planet!  That’s bigger than even not hurting other people, if you do something to him I’ll...” For a moment he floundered, obviously searching for a threat that would be effective.  “I’ll _hate_ you.  I won’t ever forgive you if you hurt my family!  Any of them.”

 

                “But you’d forgive him for hurting your family?  He did, you know, no matter how much you want to deny it.”

 

                “Stop obsessing over him!  Stop being _crazy_!”  Daniel abruptly covered his face and moaned.  “Right.  That’s what you are, you’re crazy.  I brought a crazy person home and now he’s acting crazy and I’m all surprised.  I’m an idiot.”

 

                “I don’t think you’re stupid.  And there’s no need to be insulting.  I might be crazy, but I think you realize I have a point.”  Vlad shook his head.  “Fine, I won’t discuss it any more tonight.  There’s no sense in getting agitated over it.”

 

                “You’re just...”  Daniel let out a long, slow breath.  “Don’t... I don’t know.  I don’t know what to do now.  I don’t know what to do about this.  About you.  About anything.”

 

                “You’re trying to take more responsibility than is your due again, Daniel.  You aren’t responsible for your parents, and you aren’t even responsible for me.  We are responsible for you, however good or poor a job we do protecting you.  If you were in danger, I would do my best to protect you.  But I would prefer you didn’t do the same.”

 

                “You can’t tell me something like that.  I’m still, you’re, I’m still responsible for bringing you here, and coming here, and...” Daniel’s speech was skipping as if his thoughts were coming too quickly to process.  “And I don’t want to see you get hurt either.  Not again.”

 

                “Thank you, Daniel.”  The idea of the boy throwing himself into danger for Vlad’s sake wasn’t reassuring, but the intent was, an odd conflict of interests.

 

                Daniel shook his head once again.  “Do you mind if I stay down here a little while longer?”

 

                “I’d prefer it,” he confessed.  “I worry when I can’t see for myself that you’re safe.”

 

                “But we’re not.  Not really.”  Daniel went quiet after that, as if thinking.  Vlad didn’t interrupt his thoughts, not wanting to provoke another argument.  Disagreeing with Daniel was always unpleasant, especially given that the boy was prone to emotional rather than logical responses, and he knew on some level that it hurt him to hear Vlad’s colder view of things. 

 

                They were both silent as the night went on, neither quite going to sleep.  Hours had passed before Daniel spoke again.

 

                “I think you were right from the start.”

 

                Vlad only blinked at him, wondering what in particular he was referring to.  The look Daniel gave him was that same burdened look he’d come downstairs with.

 

                “I think we should keep moving.”


End file.
